


In the Darkness

by AuKestrel



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 12:28:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 39,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15729417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuKestrel/pseuds/AuKestrel
Summary: Fraser's a Jesuit priest; Ray... well, that would be telling.





	1. Absit

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU that was written in response to a challenge - F/K having sex in a confessional. I forget the challenge and the challenger... sorry. It was a long time ago. At any rate, the challenge was fulfilled (a short PWP) but the story never let me go. Using the original PWP for the basis, I took the ds_c6d_big_bang opportunity to try to write a lengthier, fast-paced, linear story with a semblance of plot. Ha ha ha. 
> 
> Readers with a historical bent will note that this AU is set (roughly) in the early 1990s for many reasons, some of which do not need exploring and some of which are (or will be) self evident.
> 
> Thanks to Denise Raymond (rattlecatcher), TheAmusedOne, slwatson, ride_4ever, and Verushka, not necessarily in that order, for cheerleading, beta work, and patience above and beyond.

#  **In The Darkness**

####  _“Teach us to give and not to count the cost.” ~St. Ignatius Loyola_

 

_Trust in your calling, make sure your calling’s true_  
_Think of others, the others think of you_  
_Silly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfect,_  
_Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change_

_ “I Believe,” R.E.M., Life’s Rich Pageant  _

 

The doors fly open, no mean feat: they’re tall and solid, built of heavy wood in the days when mitering and carving was done by hand. 

“Fraser!” Ray gasps, falling to his knees, one hand on his chest, the other braced on the floor. 

How he knew I was here today I don’t know, any more than I know how, or why, we’ve become friends: we met over a chess table some months ago, shortly after I was posted to Chicago, in a park near St. Michael’s, on a golden summer afternoon. We’ve met since – at the park, at the food bank around the corner – for chess, for conversation, once even for coffee, held tight and sipped quietly on the front steps of the church early one morning after Mass. 

He wasn’t religious, “Fraser,” he told me that day, perhaps to explain why he called me what he did, or perhaps just because, but he asked some questions about the Society of Jesus. I answered honestly, satisfying his curiosity; and the conversation turned, as it always seemed to do for us, to other matters. 

He bends a knee, trying to get to his feet, resting an elbow on it while he tries to catch his breath, gulping in air. 

Through the soles of my thin shoes – nothing like the worn quasi-military boots that are his chosen footwear – I feel a rhythmic thudding. 

Being raised on the tundra has had some advantages in my vocation but I never thought this would be one; and although I’m no Mountie like my father, I learned early from him and his friend Quinn to track caribou not only through scat and signs but through the vibrations of the herd echoing through the ground. 

My mind is slow, or perhaps just hidebound, but hard upon my realisation comes a plan, full-fledged. I haul him to his feet and half drag him to the confessional, closing the door upon both of us and making certain I have the green light lit outside. He looks confused, confused and tired; and I whisper – because now I can hear his pursuers, not just feel them – words of reassurance; and I push him, standing, into the near corner, where no light will fall on him from outside. 

When I look again, he’s pulling a gun from a holster beneath his arm. 

For a moment I wonder how it is I’m so certain he should be given sanctuary but the voices outside, loud and angry, bring me back to the problem at hand. 

A thud on the door makes me jump, and I take a breath, composing myself and holding a vision of my grandmother before me, stern Scotswoman that she was, before opening the door. 

There are three men, all breathing hard, all clearly armed – which seems to be overkill – and angry besides. 

“Father?” the middle one says, uncertainly; he’s younger than the other two, with a St. Christopher medal hanging from a thick gold chain around his neck. The man on his left, swarthy, with heavy features, seems taken aback by my presence and falls back a step. The man on the right, his face sharp-nosed and narrow-featured, belying his bulk, frowns at them and then at me. 

“You been here long?” 

“I’ve been here for several months,” I say, feigning ignorance. 

“I’m not in the mood to play, Father,” he snaps, almost spitting at me. “You been here long today? What are you doing here?” 

“Praying for the souls of the damned,” I say as mildly as I can; St. Christopher crosses himself and puts a hand on the arm of the man on his left, urging them both backwards. 

“ _And_ hearing confession?” he asks sarcastically, nodding at the confessional where the green light still shines. 

“We had a call in the parish office,” I say, again mildly. “I was otherwise unoccupied and offered to come.” 

“Man or woman?” the man asks, his nose almost twitching. 

I shouldn’t, and I know it; but this is God’s house. My temper is usually the basis for several confessions each year, and will be again this week: “I hold the Seal of the Confessional sacred, my son.” I judge, and rightly, that this will infuriate him: he’s probably fifteen or twenty years my senior. 

It has the opposite effect on his compatriots, however: as if that was the last straw, they both stammer apologies and back away until they reach the doors, pulling them shut behind them. 

“Man or woman?” he says again, moving closer to me; and when he moves his jacket aside, I see the glint of blue steel. 

“Since I didn’t take the call, I’m afraid I cannot say,” I tell him. “I could guess; I’d have a fifty per cent chance of being right. Or perhaps you were the one who called?” 

He almost growls, then shoves me backwards, towards the wall. “Have you been here for the past fifteen minutes?” 

“Have you a good reason for asking me these questions?” 

“I’m looking for a man.” 

“If the man you seek is Our Lord, I’d be happy to help you.” 

“Listen, Father,” he says, pushing me against the wall with all of his considerable bulk, “this isn’t funny. The man I’m looking for is not a good man. Mr. Labruzzo, the man I work for, wants to ask him some questions. You might know Mr. Labruzzo… he gives a lot of money to your church and your school here. And if you don’t want to help Mr. Labruzzo, it could be a bad thing for you and your church here. _Capisce_?”

Indeed, there are several wealthy men in this parish with shady pasts; some may even have ties to organized crime, but, as Father Behan explained to me my first week here, it’s best not to ask too many questions, and, in fact, to stay out of their business altogether. 

While not a Jesuit, Father Behan is clearly a very wise man. 

Whereas I, newly minted priest though I am, am not. 

“If your employer wants to hold the service to God by a priest in the execution of his duties against him,” I say firmly, “I can only imagine the church would say good riddance to him.” 

His breath is strong, and he smells of hair oil and old sweat. He shoves his face up against mine, and his body too; and I can feel the gun pressing into my side. 

And something else: to my utter disgust, his hand drops lower, from my hip, and his gun isn’t the only thing pressing against my body. “You like games, Father?” he whispers hoarsely. “I got games that’ll leave you bleeding like a stuck pig, and you’ll be happy to play them with me after Mr. Labruzzo gets done with you.” 

For what, I want to say, but I’m too shaken: nothing in my thirty-one years has prepared me for this. I was sent here in part because the Chicago province was in need, and ours was not, but I was sent in part because Father Ellis considered me… sheltered.

And perhaps I am, and perhaps I ought to be – I have never missed the Northwest Territories more acutely than at this moment – and I make up my mind to ask him about this, all of it, in my next letter. 

His hand is on my chin, holding my face still: he says again, so close my eyes begin to cross, “ _Capisce_ , Father?” 

His compatriots save me: one half of the door opens, a narrow crack widening, and someone calls, “Sal!” 

“Don’t you forget,” he says to me in an undertone, groping for my crotch, his grasping fingers hampered by my cassock. “I’ll be telling Mr. Labruzzo about you, Father.” He squeezes hard as he says the last word, leaving me immobile, enraged, as the door shuts behind him. 

In my outrage, I’d almost forgotten Ray was there and remember only when I see the confessional door open a crack. He doesn’t look at me but slides out so quietly he’s almost a shadow, or a ghost; and when I blink again, he’s at the church doors, sliding home the bolts. 

I close my eyes, regaining my breath and my composure; when I open them again Ray is inches from me, staring at me, eyes wide and angry. “What was that? What was _that_ , Fraser?” 

“What was what –” I begin, bewildered, but he stops me not with a hand over my mouth but his lips on mine. 

“That,” he says, when I pull free, trying to formulate a protest, “and _that_ ,” and his hands are pulling me close against him; but unlike “Sal” he’s not at all garlicky or fat but lean and solid and smelling of clean sweat and an indefinable spice. “The – the groping and the _kissing_ and – and you’re a _priest_ , Fraser! And if you are gonna go for that, why _him_? Don Corleone gets you hot? Or you in it for the money, like the rest of ’em? You got nothing to say to an honest Polack with no money and no prospects?” 

I start to tell him I have no idea what he’s talking about but his eyes are blazing in the dimness of the sanctuary and his hands are strong and – and _knowing_ ; and I’ve never been kissed before, never even been touched before, not like this. 

He seems to know every part of me, to know how and where to touch me, even why; and shock can be the only explanation for my compliance – shock and disbelief. And when he sinks to his knees, unfastening my cassock, pushing my under-cassock up and aside and pulling my boxers down, muttering fiercely about _men_ in _dresses_ , I must be frozen out of time or perhaps temporarily possessed: that can be the only explanation for my failure to protest, not even a “no” at that last breathless moment before his lips touch my penis, rising hard between us. 

The name of our Lord and his Blessed Mother is wrung from my lips; and supplications too; nothing in my life has prepared me for this, his soft lips, his strong tongue, the scrape of stubble on my thigh… his hands and fingers holding, stroking… and nothing has ever felt like this before, not even half-remembered dreams ending in a sticky rush, succubi, I was told once, succubi preying on God’s servants. 

And Ray – Ray is still talking, muttering fiercely, kissing my length up one side and down the other, his body tense, shaking in his desire. And he is lovely, his mouth stretched wide around me, his eyes closed in an ecstasy I can well imagine as an incredible sensation begins to overwhelm me. I say his name once, just one more sin: this is not a plea to stop, but a plea to my body, traitor that it is, not to end this now, so soon, too soon… 

He sucks, and swallows, and swallows again, greedily, as my hands learn the shape of his head. I feel the prick of hair against my palms even as the wall is suddenly hard against my back, holding me up, wrung out, drained as I am. Ray is still sucking, gently now, his eyes still closed and his fingers rubbing – caressing – the hollow at the top of my thigh. When he finally lets me fall from his mouth he still doesn’t open his eyes but turns his face blindly to my leg, and his lips are soft and gentle on the skin at the inside of my thigh. 

He seems more shaken than I, which is hard to imagine, let alone understand. Yet I find myself touching his face, his hand, urging him from his knees, seeking to put him at ease, reassure him…

Or is that the devil’s game, since he comes to his feet and pulls me into his arms, lightning quick, the way he sunk to his knees just a few minutes ago, his mouth finding mine again. 

He tastes of bitter herbs. 

“You’ll see,” he’s whispering against my cheek, into my ear, holding me close to him, so close I can feel his heart pounding next to mine. “You’d see, God, if I could only…” 

And then he’s gone, turning on his heel so quickly I grasp nothing but air; and how is it that I worry more about his safety – are they gone? what if they’ve lain in wait? – than anything else? 


	2. Mea culpa

The sun has long since set when I rise, my knees stiff and my back weary; despite hours of prayer, my mind is anything but clear. And it’s a sign of my own culpability that I avoid Father Behan and the others, that I hasten to my room, that I lie to Brother Montoya when he taps on my door to ask if I am all right. I tell him it’s a headache, this small lie falling from my lips frighteningly easily. 

Nor can I imagine, after that sleepless night haunted by waking dreams of demons, confessing to Father Behan, not because he knows me; but because he doesn’t. Father Behan would believe me horrified and penitent. Father Ellis will know that I can’t, or perhaps won’t, erase the image of Ray on his knees before me, the feeling – and now I know, oh, how I know, what “carnal” truly means – of my seed spilling, unbidden, down his strong throat. Father Ellis is the one who brought me to know my nature, my downfall, my weakness: pride that I mistook for honour, stiff, unbending, more unyielding than the granite of the Scottish coast my forebears left behind a hundred years ago. 

Proud and temperamental; and I fall to my knees beside my bed, pleading with St. Teresa for guidance, with Mary for understanding, with Jesus for forgiveness. My eyes are wet but my spirit is still not humbled when there is yet another tap on the door. 

Father Behan this time: I’ve missed dinner, early Mass, and breakfast, and as far as he knows I have no reason to be fasting. One look at me and his kind face reflects distress, but I find my feet even as I shake my head, even as I ask his permission to call and confess to Father Ellis. 

He grants it readily: he’s a good-hearted man, a man of generous impulses, and it shames me that I cannot emulate him, that I cannot be this man of God when it’s clear it’s easy if one has faith, faith and humility. 

Perhaps I ought to have given more thought to the Franciscan Order. 

But it’s far too late for that now. 

Father Behan lends me his study, simple and comfortable, like him. It’s almost an anticlimax to hear Father Ellis’ voice. I had been quite suddenly certain that he would be away, or busy, that I would have to endure this torture with no end in sight; and I’m horrified anew by my lack of resolve, my lack of strength. Surely I should, must, endure this as long as He deems fitting: another penance. 

I hear compassion from Father Ellis I didn’t expect and that almost undoes me completely. There is nothing feigned about the tears in my voice, the contrition in my heart as he speaks; but when he warns that I was in, perhaps, mortal danger, and that this man I sheltered might have easily been an agent of either God or Satan, I cannot hold back my tears, more bitter than–

My penance is lighter than I deserve: nine rosaries each day for nine days, praying the Sorrowful Mysteries for eight and the Glorious for the last, and fasting until they are completed. He reminds me, gently, that it is the sin of pride to do more than the penance assigned and I flush hotly. 

Absolution follows; he has me repeat the words with him: _Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti_. 

“Go in peace,” he says quietly. He doesn’t need to add the rest; I won’t, can’t forget. 

When I exit the study, Father Behan gets to his feet, his rosary clasped in one hand. He was kneeling under the window at the end of the hallway, keeping watch. 

I tell him, with some reluctance, of my encounter with the three men: I knew he must be told but Father Ellis absolved me from telling him all. Father Behan, as I expected, brushes it off: he’s known Vinny Labruzzo “since his confirmation and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He’s more concerned with the threat from Sal; he thinks he knows St. Christopher – “Jimmy Loria,” he says, nodding, but the others are unfamiliar to him, perhaps new to Chicago or at least to this neighbourhood. He counsels me not to walk alone, especially at night, until he has a chance to talk to Vinny; these men from outside, he says, don’t always respect tradition. 

His matter-of-fact acceptance of the possible danger bruited by Father Ellis is… chilling; and I retreat to my penance almost more frightened than thoughtful. 

Almost; in the bright sunshine after early Mass the next morning my fears seem ridiculously overblown. I find myself at the park and realize in some embarrassment that I’m looking for a blond head, for a tall lean figure; but it’s only to make sure he’s all right. He ought to have gotten away from Labruzzo’s men; I can only hope he did, and pray for him: he was probably as overwrought as I, mistaken, misguided, and afraid. 

But I didn’t repeat his words to Father Ellis: they made no sense at the time and they make none still. 

Wednesday dawns bright and clear and it takes discipline to say my penance. Because of this I say it in Latin, thus forcing myself to slow down, to meditate, to contemplate. And I fast until late Mass – Father Behan says Latin mass even now twice a week – and listen with ears sharper, more ready to hear than I ever remember feeling, thrilling, even ecstatic, with the grace and peace of Our Lord. 

That night I sleep soundly, untroubled by dreams; and the next day, after my penance, I write to Father Ellis to express my gratitude for his time, his understanding, and above all his wisdom. “We are indeed heir to the sins of the flesh but we can inherit the kingdom of God through God’s grace and strength; and these desires to serve Christ our Lord are given to us by Him, proof anew of his bounty and the great love and concern with which He is waiting to save us.” 


	3. Refugium peccatorum

By Thursday the _de facto_ house arrest is wearing on me. Running – a habit I picked up in my life before seminary – is out of the question. Brother Montoya goes with me to the park after early Mass but he’s being polite, not seeing the point of these walks of mine, nor why he must accompany me. And, indeed, it’s not fair: he has plenty to do. So I cut my walks short, not looking for – or seeing – any sign of Ray. 

And I try not to remember the first time I met him, but it’s too late: the memories overwhelm me.

It was a hot summer day, but the chess tables were shaded. By that time, I had a regular partner, Gladys, but she had gone on an extended visit to to help her granddaughter, who was expecting her second and was having complications. But I came to the park nonetheless: not only are habits hard to break, but this was my brief time outside myself: self-contemplation is nigh impossible when one is working out a chess problem. 

I didn’t notice him at first, a fact which surprises me, in retrospect; but perhaps he was being cautious even then; it was not until I noticed him, two days after Gladys left for Seattle, that I realized he had been there the day before, reading a magazine on a bench nearby. 

On this day, however, he sat down close enough to see the board, and the problem; and after a time, he startled me out of my contemplation by reaching over my shoulder and moving a bishop.

We played a game that day, a casual game, feinting here and there, but he was relaxed enough to chuckle. I still remember how he flipped up the sunshades on his eyeglasses, how I was caught by the clearness of his eyes, and the smile lurking within them. 

The next day we met as if by prearrangement, although not a word had been spoken between us; the day after that, after a pitched battle, his victory hard won, we ate hot dogs from a vendor’s cart, and I was late to the parish meeting. 

And we continued to meet, rarely missing a day, although there were times he was late or left abruptly, and there were times he did not flip up the sunshades on his glasses and I could feel a heaviness within him. 

Despite that, we seldom talked about ourselves. There were so many, many other things to talk about, we never had time. Only now am I realizing how little I know about him. I don’t even know his last name.

But it doesn’t seem to matter: if I close my eyes, I can still summon the scent of the heady, heavy air of those late summer days, the sound of the fountain, not far off, and the quiet, timeless buzz of insects as he contemplated a move, his hand hovering over a piece, his long fingers, those same long fingers that–

I shake myself, literally: this way lies madness, madness and… sin. 

That evening, at Mass, I see St. Christopher. Father Behan sees him too but he leaves directly after the Eucharist. However, on our way back to the rectory, Father Behan says it’s a “good sign” Jimmy showed up. 

I am angry, afraid, impatient, all these, and more. I blame my state of mind, and my consequent state of unrest, for my inability to find sleep, or even peace, once in bed. I toss and turn and toss again, climb out of bed and say my penance all the way through until my knees are aching and my eyes are heavy, asking for the grace and peace of the Lord and the love, the sympathy of His Blessed Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows. 

But still I am tormented, waking before dawn to sticky underwear and a false sense of benison, the peace of physical release, the peace of the devil himself. It is not the peace of righteous prayer, the peace granted us through the grace of God and all his saints. 

St. Ignatius struggled with this, as did St. Augustine, but again flesh is weak and sheer lassitude pins me to the bed, as if the devil himself is holding me, holding my eyes closed too.

When I wake a second time, the torment continues: this time my penis is stiff, stiff and exquisitely sensitive, so that even the brush of the blanket across my groin is almost too much. I tumble out of bed onto my knees, fumbling for my rosary and beseeching the Holy Virgin, St. Michael, and St. Catherine for mercy, mercy and relief. And I pray my penance, eyes shut tight, concentrating on each word, on each Mystery, ignoring my body as completely as possible. 

The minutes pass as if in a dream, each decade drawing me higher, further, my mouth shaping the familiar words as if speaking to a lover, soft against Her breast. I feel disconnected, humbled, awed, ecstatic; and when I reach the penultimate _Gloria Patri_ all of it tumbles down together in a bright sparkling rush where I am one with God and the universe suddenly, briefly makes sense. 

At early Mass, the ritual of the Eucharist moves me to tears, not for the first time; and I cling to the wafer in my mouth as if Jesus can draw me to heaven through that alone. I move through my daily tasks serenely, disconnected from the world. When Father Behan offers to relieve me of the duty of Reconciliation – we are rotated, like doctors on call – I decline: even the threat of Mr. Labruzzo’s displeasure can’t penetrate my calm. I recognize it for what it is: the grace of Our Holy Mother, the gift of her serenity. 

I’m truly grateful to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to hope that I can, through God, provide a path to repentance and peace for those as troubled as I. I remember the words of St. Teresa, that it was useful to have gone astray so we may acquire experience, and I also remember to pass her words on to those whose confessions I hear. 

The bell rings, two chimes: Father Behan allows time to say the Rosary before and after Mass, and uses the bell to mark the quarter-hours. I reach up to turn the lights out and hear the door swing open in the other compartment. One last confession then; and we’ve still time. So instead I turn the light to red and open my mouth– 

The voice is familiar, all too familiar: “Bless me, Fraser, for I have sinned.” His words are low and rapid, and I can make out the shadow of his head against the grille. “It’s been... huh, seven years since my last confession and that was only because my brother–” 

Swifter than thought, I’m on my feet, throwing open my door, flinging open his, almost dragging him back into my side of the confessional. “Ray, are you all right? Are you insane?” 

Even in the dim light of the confessional I can see a blackened eye, faded to yellow and green, and scrapes on one cheekbone, a healing cut on his lip. 

“I had to see you,” he says simply, wincing when I catch his jaw to tilt his face toward the light. “And word is Labruzzo’s goons are after a priest at St. Michael’s.” 

“Father Behan’s going to talk to Mr. Labruzzo–” 

He scoffs, laughing, and then he winces. I see the shadows under his eyes and the stubble on his face is longer than I’ve seen it before, nigh on beard length. “Might as well talk to a pair of cement shoes, Fraser, the new players on the board ain’t listening to any of our hometown boys. They got something, they know something, they got _someone_ …” 

He breaks off, shaking his head in frustration. 

I feel under my seat for the thermos of tea, pressed into my hands by Brother Montoya on my way out of the rectory. I hadn’t touched it, hadn’t needed it; and now I see that it was providence. 

“To put your mind at ease, I’m all right. One of them has been coming to Mass,” I say quietly, pouring a tea into the lid. “Drink this now, finish it, and rest. After Mass I’ll make sure you can get away safely again.” 

“What is this?” he asks, one eyebrow raised, as the scent wafts through the small space between us: he was expecting black tea, no doubt. 

“Peppermint tea.”

“I could probably use some caffeine,” he says wearily, sipping it nonetheless, then apparently throwing caution to the winds and tipping it back all the way, swallowing greedily. 

I try not to watch his throat muscles, try not to remember– 

The bell chimes again, thrice, God interceding once again, recalling me to myself, to my vows, to my duty. 

“Lock the door after me,” I whisper, switching both outside lights off. “You’ll be safe here; I’ll keep watch from the sanctuary.” 

He grips my forearm, then presses his forehead against it. After I push the door shut, I hear the bolt slide home. 

I attend Mass with less than my usual concentration, praying only for Ray’s safety. As I expected, the man with the St. Christopher medal – Jimmy Loria – is indeed at Mass. This time he’s accompanied by his compatriot, fortunately not the one who’d threatened me. 

I help to tidy the sanctuary after Mass and the saying of the Rosary is over, as I should, so it occasions no comment. When Brother Montoya begins to check the doors, I accompany him, more to put my own mind at ease than to help him, but he seems grateful. Together we close and lock the front doors, and then I tell him I’ll check the east doors, which were locked all day but which I know he checks every night.


	4. Propter libidinem

There’s no answer when I tap on the door of the confessional, so I find my key, a shiny modern one that’s more out of place in this church than I am in Chicago. Ray’s slumped down on the floor, his head and arms resting on the seat of the chair, his long legs folded up in a manner that looks quite uncomfortable, almost as uncomfortable as the shoulder holster that crosses his back. I pull the door shut carefully, quietly, so no stray beam of light betrays us, although the church is empty now, and wake him quietly, although it goes against my heart to do so. 

He comes awake almost instantly, as if he’s a soldier, and I wonder if he’s a dispossessed veteran. He’s too young for Vietnam, of course, but perhaps not for the Gulf War. He’s never talked about his life, but if he is a veteran, that might explain his reticence. 

“Sorry,” he says, rubbing his uninjured eye. “How long did I sleep?” 

“Just a Mass,” I say, holding my hands together tightly lest I betray myself and touch him, the temptation suddenly overwhelming. 

He grins, getting to his feet slowly, so slowly I can almost hear his bones creaking. “Guess Chicago is worth a Mass.” 

I’m so surprised I can’t answer for a moment: a dispossessed veteran, evidently involved in a Mob-related turf war – and widely, and well, read. 

Well, I knew he was intelligent – his chess game is often better than my own – and my grandmother was always the first to remind me that one oughtn’t to judge a book by its cover, especially, she would add, the “nonsense” on the back. 

“You recognize anyone?” he asks, shrugging into his jacket, the holster disappearing as if by magic. 

“Yes. Yes, the – well, two of them, the man with the medal around his neck, and the other man who was here before, but not the one they called Sal.”

“Not your boyfriend?” he says, more dryly than not. “When I heard they were after you I figured maybe I got it wrong, but he told a crew down at the pool hall that you were his _damerino_. You stop putting out, what?” 

His voice is so acidic, so different from just a few seconds ago, that I blink, my throat suddenly dry. “I – I didn’t do _anything_ ,” I say finally, heartfelt, not even knowing where to begin. 

He cocks his head to one side. “He dump you? He wanted to pass you on, you said ‘no dice’? They do that, you know; this your first? They pass ’em on all the time.” 

“I don’t even _know_ him,” I say harshly. “And I wish I’d never met him.” And I wouldn’t have, if not for you, I think, but I keep my temper in check enough not to give voice to that pointless accusation. 

“Yeah?” he says, consideringly; and I suddenly realize he has me in the corner, his hand on the back of the chair so I can’t duck away. “They always say that… that’s what Stella said when she left me. Then her new boyfriend’s land deal went wrong. She walked out on him, ended up in the hospital. Hit-and-run; no witnesses. So that’s why I figured you walked out on Gaspipe Gravina and not the other way around.” 

I don’t know where to begin to put him straight, to correct these misapprehensions, but he doesn’t give me a chance: his lips are on mine again. And I realize with some horror that I have been waiting for just this moment, that I have been craving his touch since I heard his voice again, or even – if I must be honest – before that. 

And perhaps I _am_ the catamite he deems me, because I moan deep in my throat and kiss him back as well as I can, unpractised though I am, mimicking his movements, holding him against me just as tightly as he’s holding me.

And this time – this time I feel him, hard against my thigh, riding me; and I press back, just as hard, riding his thigh too. He makes a sound between a groan and a laugh and tucks his leg up, higher and harder, letting me go just long enough to lick my cheek, to gasp my name, to fix his teeth in my earlobe. “Fraser, Fraser,” he whispers, shifting his hips just enough that our erections slide against each other. He has a hand between us, popping the rivet on his jeans and I– 

–I’m helping, helping him pull the zipper down, helping him push my clothes up and out of the way, gasping when his hand slips into my boxers. 

“God, you’re beautiful,” he’s whispering, fluttering kisses across my cheekbone. “Too beautiful for him, for _that_ , God, Fraser, why? I could – _we_ could – oh, God–” 

He breaks off: imitating him again, I’d shifted my hips again and moved my hand inside his underwear, finding the hard warm length of him, letting his glans rub against the palm of my hand, where it leaves a wet smear. Then we’re flesh to naked flesh, Ray tilting me backwards with one hand bracing me, our members rampant, striving against each other, tumbling towards completion. 

“So – good,” I whisper, tears starting to my eyes: I know I am lost, I know I am damned, and yet I cannot stop, could not stop if my life depended on it, although my soul does. 

“Yeah,” he groans, biting my throat, his erection slicking warm across my belly, across my own hardness, two swords battling for victory. “God, wanna fuck you, God, Fraser, want you, _want_ you, you’re _mine_ , damn it, you should be mine…” 

And I am: I _am_ his, and I’m lost, because Heaven couldn’t be better than this, this ecstatic completion, flesh to flesh, held close against him. Nothing could, nothing except the next moment when he drops his head to my shoulder with a thud that shakes my very bones and I feel the warm pulse of his release on my stomach. 

“C’mon,” he’s whispering, straining against me, gasping for breath, making noises as guttural as they are lewd, one hand slipping between us, guiding his penis to push against mine, pulse after wet pulse. The feel of his semen on my penis is enough to push me over, profligate and uncaring of anything but my own pleasure, deposited between the two of us, both our bellies warm and slick now. 

“ _God_ ,” he whispers after a lingering kiss, and it doesn’t sound like blasphemy even though it is, especially now, especially here, especially after… 

The tears in my eyes are running freely, assuaging only my confusion and not my guilt, even as Ray leans in and down, his tongue emerging, long and wicked, like a snake’s, to lick our commingled semen from my belly. The words flow from him like a peaty river, soft and warm: “If it’s sex, Fraser, I can do that, I can give you that,” he’s whispering as he laps at me… at us. 

And, so help me God, I want to taste him – us – too, even though I should be thinking only of my soul, repenting, recanting this sin, this sinful worship of the flesh. 

Too late, all of it: he looks up, then finds his feet, leaning in against me. And my traitorous body leans against him, seeking out his touch, the feel of his warmth and strength all along the length of me. 

“What, Fraser?” he’s whispering, gentle, so gentle, almost as if he understands. 

But he doesn’t. 

“I can help you,” he’s whispering. “Help you get away, if that’s what you want, help you hide until the Church can get you away, if you really want to leave him.” 

The _Church_ , my God...

“Fraser,” he’s whispering against my lips, insistent, his thumb wiping my cheek dry. “Let me–” 

“You can’t help,” I say, closing my eyes and staring into the red darkness. He can’t help: he is the agent of my damnation, though the fault is mine alone. 

“I _can_ ,” he says, even more insistently. “You don’t belong to him, Fraser – ” 

“No, I don’t,” I say, finally, belatedly angry. “I never did. I never met him until Tuesday, when he came here looking for you, and I hope to God I never meet him again.” 

Sinful, sinful and cruel to take my own anger out on him, but I do. If I didn’t already have far too much to confess, to repair, I would add it to my list. 

His hand drops to my jaw, his fingers still on my face, his thumb caressing my chin; and he stares at me. “I... what?” He leans in close again, his lips brushing mine gently, almost as if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. And my lips cling to his, belying my protest, betraying my very soul. “But you... he...” 

I don’t want reality to intrude, this moment to end, his voice soft, his lips softer, gentle even in his bewilderment. So I press close to him again, insistent: if I am damned, surely these few moments of indulgence will make no difference. I put a hand up to his hair, hesitant; he resists for three heartbeats, perhaps four, and then he makes a soft sound into my mouth and presses me back against the wall, full-bodied and strong, his kiss demanding, orchestrating a response that I – pitifully – am only too willing to provide. 

But he’s not to be distracted, and somehow I already knew that about him. When he pulls back, even though his lips are moist, even though his eyes are half-lidded and sultry, he persists: “I saw you... he touched you, he _touched_ you, Fraser, like you belonged to him.” 

“He... he did,” I whisper back, swallowing hard. I don’t want to remember, I didn’t want to feel that way, like a… a thing, a thing to assuage his lust. I breathe in deep, the scent of Ray insensibly calming. 

“He touched you,” Ray says again, slowly, his eyes narrowing in anger, his lips thinning. “He was threatening you.” 

I have no words: I can only nod, and marvel at his quick intelligence. 

“This is worse than I thought,” he says abruptly, his hands falling to my shoulders and gripping there, almost too tightly. “This is – wait, this is _my_ fault. Shit, fuck and god _damn_ –” 

“Shhhh!” I whisper, putting my fingers to his lips: the vestry door squeaks, and Brother Montoya– 

Sure enough, he’s calling out for me, thankfully the length of the church away. “I’ll leave the vestry door unlocked,” I whisper. “Be careful when you go; there were two of them here tonight.” I’m wiping at my stomach with my undercassock, my fingers fumbling with the fastenings on my cassock itself, and I can only be thankful – I’ve long since lost count of my sins – for the practicality of the Jesuit design that lacks all those buttons. And if I am sticky and uncomfortable, it is – it should be – only the beginning of my penance. 

“No,” he whispers roughly, grabbing my face, forcing me to look at him. “No, Fraser. We have to talk. I have to – God, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t – where can we meet? When?” 

“I’m not allowed to leave,” I whisper back, pulling away from his hands. “Not alone.” 

“Not with Sal Gravina after you, no. The choir loft; I’ll meet you there tomorrow afternoon, before confession. We have to talk.” 

“Ray–” 

“Promise me,” he says, his eyes fierce. 

And this, too, I already knew: I cannot deny him. 

Brother Montoya calls out again; I nod and duck out, trusting in the dimness to hide my disarray. 

“There you are,” he calls from down the nave. “Father Behan was wondering if you’d run into trouble.” 

It’s all I can do not to laugh: I feel a bubble of hysteria rising inside me. Trouble indeed, and of a sort Father Behan probably never considered. “I have penance,” I tell him, feeling for my rosary almost instinctively even as yet another lie rises to my lips. “I’m... I’m fasting. I’m sorry, I should have told you.”

“Oh,” he says doubtfully; I know it’s on the tip of his tongue to question me further, even to argue with what he considers my all-too-frequent fasting, but he makes no comment until we’re crossing the yard. 

“Soup, and some bread,” he offers quietly. “I could bring you some...” 

That’s entirely against the rules; my soul is suddenly weary. “I won’t put you to any trouble,” I say just as quietly. “I’ll have a bowl in the kitchen and wash up for you.” 

“They’re still eating–” 

“No,” I say, “I’m very late.” And, what’s more, I can’t face Father Behan at the moment. 

I can’t even face myself. 

Cowardice is also a sin, and one I haven’t, until now, suffered from. 


	5. Castigo corpus meum

The next morning I wake as tired as if I hadn’t slept at all. My heartbeat seems to be keeping track of the minutes until that less-than-exact “afternoon” appointment with Ray for reasons that, I suspect, have nothing whatsoever to do with the salvation of my soul – or his – and everything to do with my base nature. 

In penance I offer to clean the kitchen, and then the fish for dinner, for Brother Montoya. He agrees after some argument, his gratitude yet another cross to bear. I do so joyfully: in injury may I thus be pardoned, in some small measure at least.

But even the fish scales, even the wooden scrub brush, none of it is enough to recall my mind and heart to my loyalties. Afterwards, in my room, I come close to weeping: I am caught in a web of my own devising and I can see no way free, no way to liberate my soul from its thrall to my human nature, to my earthly bonds. 

Until I remember Father Dirninger. 

He was an old, old priest at seminary. He was, of course, retired, but he taught monthly conferences in canonical papers, many of which, it was said, predated Noah. 

It looked to me, then, like a prong collar, the sort used to train dogs, especially those with heavy coats. Now, seven years later, removing it from the bottom of my small box of personal possessions, it still looks like one, save for the leather thongs, soft and worn, on either side. 

Twice a week each class met separately for prayers; Father Dirninger led mine. One evening, after prayers, he asked me to stay behind. He handed it to me with little fanfare, his Moravian accent no more or less pronounced than usual: “I think that you also will need this.” 

When Father Poole explained what it was, I was shocked, but while Father Poole lacked Father Ellis’ kindness, his matter-of-factness tempered my reaction, my… anger; he said, characteristically straightforward, that Father Dirninger must recognize in me something of himself. 

Father Dirninger died in his sleep the next afternoon, while he napped. I never had a chance to find out why he needed a cilice, or why he thought I might. 

Until today. 

The thongs are stained and soft; according to Father Poole, it was the practice of those who used such things to wear them each day for a time. 

And, like the collar I mistook it for, the prongs are not cruel. But they are persistent, relentless, reminding me with every movement, every flex of muscle, every intake of breath, that they’re there. Thus must I also be here, my mind and my heart as well, all of us together where my body is. 

And the pain… the pain is, indeed, enough, enough that I can concentrate on my prayers, enough that every time my mind wanders I am brought back to earth, freed from my human prison by my very body, a paradox that would delight St. Ignatius. 

Thus fortified, I make my way to the choir loft, each step a distinct reminder of my responsibilities, my ideals, my vows. 

But although I wait for him, tidying the choir loft as I do so – my paternal grandmother, though despising Catholicism as the Great Harlot, had several kindred spirits in those who told us in seminary that the devil found work for idle hands – there is no sign of him when the bells signal the beginning of the Mass of Anticipation. 

There are countless reasons he could be late, or delayed, or simply unable to come, but the advent of St. Christopher yet again at Mass, alone this time, does not settle my mind. I linger, perhaps too long, over locking up afterwards, hoping to hear the rasp of his low whisper, feel the scrape of his– 

In frank horror I realise I am growing hard, here, _now_ – God forgive me, Holy Mary, intercede for me– 

I fall to my knees, feeling the cilice bite into my thigh, sharp and cruel. “ _Deus meus, ex toto corde pænitet me omnium meorum peccatorum_...” I repeat myself, three times through, flexing my thigh muscles harshly, begging forgiveness for this sin, for all my sins, beyond enumeration. 

At last the peace of Our Lord descends, granting me peace and grace, grace enough to stumble down the steps, peace enough to take my place in the side pew with Brother Montoya, and patience enough to sit through the parish meeting afterwards, even to answer when spoken to. It is with some reluctance that I remove the cilice that night when I retire, but I must trust that my thoughts have been given a new direction and accept the gift of His peace, resolving to give my heart unreservedly to the Lord from this point forward. I will follow in Lot’s footsteps; I will not look back.


	6. Panis angelicus

Which is how I find myself helping Brother Montoya and two young men (introduced to me, apparently interchangeably, as Goyo-and-Victor) load briquettes into four converted oil drums at four the next morning to prepare for a festival to honour Our Blessed Mother’s Nativity. This, Brother Montoya tells me cheerfully, is just the dry run for the three-day parish festival in October, but it’s “good experience for you and the boys.” 

My senses thankfully dulled by lack of coffee, it takes me an hour or more to realise that Brother Montoya, even now, is keeping watch over me, sending me to fetch bags of beans with Goyo, asking me to show Victor where to fill the coffee urns. I send up a silent prayer of thanks and gratitude for the watchfulness of His angels and the forgiveness bought with the blood of His Lamb. 

Two women – Rosario and Isabel – arrive bearing trays of tamales after the coffee is made. Brother Montoya commends me to their care while he goes to early Mass, and thus it is I find myself shunted to one side with Goyo and Victor, all of us watching in some bemusement as they take over. 

Brother Montoya returns with Father Behan in tow and he, Rosario, and Isabel settle at one end of a long table to drink coffee and talk. Brother Montoya checks the beans and then sends me to the ten-thirty Mass with Father Behan. Afterwards we break our fast together over tamales with Brother Montoya and Father Behan tells us of his travels in Peru. Brother Montoya passes me off to Isabel, who sets me to work chopping peppers and onions for the _carne guisada_. It’s cheerful work, for all it makes my eyes water, and it’s with some surprise that I hear the bells ringing: the festival is starting. 

“Good work,” Brother Montoya says in my ear. “Take Victor and Jorgé to the kitchen. If you each bring back a bag of rice, that should be plenty.” 

Somewhere Victor has lost Goyo and acquired Jorgé; but as we leave the kitchen, Jorgé is accosted by another young man. Their rapid Spanish is beyond my limited abilities but somewhat to my surprise I hear my name, and Jorgé indicates me with a nod of his head. I don’t quite catch his name, but his message is more welcome than he can imagine: “He said to tell you not to worry. He will come when he can. And he said to tell you be careful.” 

I don’t ask how he knows Ray; nor do I ask how he manages to be a go-between. All I can really do is thank him, thank him profusely and shake his hand in gratitude. I invite him to return with us, to have a tamale, but he says with a quick grin that shouldn’t really remind me of Ray, but does, that he has a prize to win for his sister, and he shouts a cheerful goodbye to Jorgé and Victor as we shoulder our bags and head back to Brother Montoya. 

During the afternoon I catch sight of Jorgé and his friend; his friend is carrying a giant pink snake that, despite my lack of personal experience, I think ought to be large enough to gratify any sister. Victor was joined by cousins and friends some time ago and Brother Montoya dismissed him. Goyo reappeared shortly thereafter, whereupon he and I were sent to find churros for the kitchen crew. Jorgé sees us too and waves; his friend holds the snake over his head with both hands. 

Later still, as Father Behan is almost absentmindedly polishing off the last of the churros with a fresh cup of coffee, several women, old and not quite so old, descend on our makeshift kitchen to begin cleaning. The day suddenly seems very long indeed and they are a welcome sight, even though the festival itself will go on well into the night, Father Behan says with a wry smile. Fortunately our sleeping quarters are on the opposite side of the church, he adds, so we may be able to get some sleep. From this I understand I am dismissed, and I am almost too exhausted to be grateful. I look for Brother Montoya, who began the day with me, but he is deep in conversation with Isabel and Rosario again. I stand awkwardly for a moment but weariness triumphs. 

And, in truth, I haven’t taken Ray’s admonitions to heart any more than Father Behan’s, because it feels glorious to be free for a few moments, to be alive, to be, without worrying that I’m burdening someone with the task of watching over me. 

There’s a roar of laughter near a red and white striped tent and I see a pink tail disappear between the next two tents. I wonder if it’s Jorgé’s friend or if his sister showed up to claim her prize. As I pass I glance down the makeshift alley; the pink snake is nowhere to be seen, just the glow of several cigarettes in the gathering dusk. One of the smokers sees me and raises his hand in greeting; I wave back.

Then my arm is twisted behind my back, painful and sudden, and a cloth descends over my nose and mouth. I recognize danger without knowing why and I strike out blindly. In answer, a fist connects solidly with my face, and then pain explodes behind my ear and I see red, then black, then nothing at all. 


	7. Concaptivus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is the principal reason for the rape/non-con warning. Nothing explicit happens and Fraser is not actually raped. However, please feel free to skip the chapter if you would prefer not to read it. I think the next part will make enough sense to let you go on with.
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Consciousness returns slowly, unwillingly, my thoughts as heavy as my head, the pounding in my ears swelling to a crescendo and then fading to a dull repetitive thud.

It takes a few more seconds to gather my wits, even though my nose has already identified my prison as a basement, more dry than damp. A sudden rattle and a clank almost has me jumping out of my skin before I realize it’s a steam boiler, old and unwieldy, and apparently just on the other side of the wall: I can feel the heat radiating onto my bare skin.

Although I’ve been left stark naked, small mercies: at least I’m not bound.

Nor, as I stretch gingerly and begin to catalogue my situation and surroundings, do I appear to be much damaged: my head is throbbing behind my left ear, the left side of my face is tender – I touch my cheek gingerly – and my side is throbbing painfully, as if someone kicked me as I lay unconscious.

The room is large, with a cavernous ceiling, a bare light bulb that hangs from a cord swaying at least five feet above my head, disturbed, no doubt, by the vibrations of the boiler. At one end of the outer wall there’s a single row of glass blocks. There’s a drain at that end of the room too, a large drain, to be sure, but not large enough to accommodate me.

The mattress is thin and old, the blue ticking beloved of hospitals, orphanages and barracks of yore, and I find the implications of its presence both alarming and comforting. I am not to be killed, I assume, at least not immediately, or they would not have supplied even this meagre comfort; on the other hand, apparently my captors intend to keep me here long enough to need it.

I can feel the panic welling up in my chest and I swallow thickly, my mouth dry, my tongue feeling swollen and much too large. I feel for my rosary but of course it’s gone as well. I square my shoulders and take a breath; and I begin to say a rosary using my fingers to keep track, a trick related to us by a priest from Bogotá.

It takes all my concentration, as indeed it should, and I feel the panic receding. For the first time in several years I think of the tales my father told, he and Buck; suddenly they’re of more significance than simply stories to while away long winter evenings.

I take another breath, deeper this time, and begin to explore my prison.

The door is solid metal, its hinges equally solid: definitely, then, a dry basement. The room has been swept recently; I find a broom straw near the drain, of the kind used in industrial push brooms. That it was used for storage until recently is also apparent: there are outlines of several large crates near the not-quite-window, and, near the wall, two bent nails.

The window itself, while not wide enough to be of use for extrication, shows promise: the mortar holding the blocks together is spongy, soft to the touch. I listen intently but can’t hear signs of motor traffic. However, it’s possible that there are pedestrians or even night watchmen in the area.

There seems to be nothing else in the room, not even under the mattress. I find a cranny in the shadows of a corner and stow my broom straw and nails there, more to amuse myself than because I expect them to be removed: as a child, rapt at my grandmother’s knee, I dreamt of such adventures. I too would have made pens and ink; I too would have broken a jug, dug a tunnel.

The reality is much more sobering, in part because I am no political prisoner. I am not, in fact, even certain if I’ve been kidnapped because my part in hiding Ray has become known or for another, less – or more – obvious reason.

And, naïve as I am, I realize the first possibility is more reassuring than my egotistical and secret dread: that Sal Gravina has brought me here for his own reasons and not under orders from “Mr. Labruzzo.”

At this inopportune moment there are noises from without and the sound of metal scraping: a bolt slid aside. I stand and take a quick breath, then another, and send up a brief prayer to St. Teresa for strength, to Our Mother for protection, and to St. Ignatius for the courage to accept God’s will in this as in all things.

I should not, perhaps, find it comforting that St. Christopher is one of the men standing behind Sal Gravina, but at least he looks as unhappy as I feel.

My father is wont to say, “Never follow a man over a cliff.”

I wonder if – I hope – St. Christopher sees a cliff on the horizon.

Gravina looks me over, head to toe, and it takes everything I have to suppress a shudder. But I say nothing, forcing him, at last, to break the silence.

That he does so surprises me, but I don’t allow that to show either. “So you tell me again you know nothing of the man Mr. Labruzzo is looking for?”

“I met him in the park. We played chess. I know little else about him, aside from the fact that he’s apparently devoted to singlehandedly reviving the Capablanca variation. Chess problems don’t lend themselves to intimacy.”

His smile grows. “Intimacy, Father? You got him to show up almost _every single day_. So maybe he remembers you better. At least you should hope so. ”

“My hope is in God, since your ears are closed.”

St. Christopher begins to make the sign of the cross but the other man inhales sharply and St. Christopher looks at him guiltily.

Gravina ignores them. “Well, Father, it appears then you’ll be our guest until we find this man. If there’s anything we can do for you, please ask.”

“My–”

“Except clothes, Father. We like to have insurance on our... insurance.”

“–rosary.”

Gravina’s eyes narrow.

St. Christopher seems unable to cope, and breaks in. To my surprise, he has an accent. “Uh, what about dinner, Sal?”

“Bronco, you get him dinner,” Gravina says without looking at them. “Jimmy, you stay here while he eats. Don’t take your eyes off him.”

The look in his eyes, frankly lascivious, sends that apocryphal chill up my spine as his gaze sweeps me from head to toe, lingering on my midsection. It’s all I can do to not shudder – to not give him the satisfaction.

He seems to sense it, because his gaze remains fixed there as he says, “Father, I don’t want to be rude to a… guest, but please don’t cause any trouble. I’m not a very… patient man.”

This time I do shudder, a tremor only, but he doesn’t miss it. Can’t, not the way he’s watching me. Finally he looks me in the eye and his grin broadens. It seems to hang in the air for a long moment.

Behind him, I see Jimmy’s eyes widen, as if it might have just now occurred to him that this situation is more than simply “business.”

There’s a weakness: his, for mine. I note it even as I suppress another shudder, as his footsteps die away and a distant door clangs shut.

Still,  I’m surprised when, after Bronco and Jimmy bring food, the latter also hands me not only a rosary but an acrylic blanket, the kind with a satin binding. To my surprise, the jerk of his head indicates the outer room, not the one where I’m being kept. It has large windows, some of plain glass and some covered in metal mesh, and another interior door in addition to the large double door that clearly leads to the outside. I wrap the blanket like a toga; that it is fluffy, and light blue, adds to what is surely a ridiculous effect. Indeed, when Bronco turns from setting the food out on the small table, I see him struggle not to smile, or perhaps even laugh. I do smile, sweeping the hem behind me “right royally,” engendering, finally, a laugh from Bronco and even a smile from Jimmy.

They chat in Spanish, quietly and desultorily, as I eat. When I finish, somewhat to my surprise, Jimmy takes the rubbish away while Bronco brings out a small folding chess set. The sight is like water to a parched throat: I reach out instinctively to help place the pieces. Jimmy returns and this time his smile is genuine.

“We have been teaching him,” Bronco says, nodding. “But you, you’re an expert, right?”

“A talented amateur, I’m afraid,” I say. “I grew up near the Arctic Circle, and the winter nights are very long there.”

“Would you mind to show us some games?” Jimmy says in a rush.

I would like nothing better, and I say so with alacrity. We play two games, quickly, then a third, where I take them step by step through the moves, as I taught some friends in seminary. Jimmy grows relaxed enough, eventually, to ask me questions of how I learned to play, and Bronco tells us that his uncles played, but not his father, and that he never thought priests would play.

“It is the game of kings,” I say, watching Jimmy puzzle out a trap I’ve laid. “Not of Satan.”

“Satan needs no such games,” Bronco says. Jimmy reaches for his knight and then pauses. “Tío Memo would say to watch the pawns.” He looks over at me: “Is that true?”

“It has been said that pawns are the soul of chess.”

“Just like life,” Jimmy mutters, moving his hand to the pawn he was about to sacrifice. “I see a trap here, then another there.”

“Just like life,” Bronco says with a grin.

“Is this why you play, as a priest?” Jimmy says. “To see all the traps?”

“As a priest?” The question startles me: it has come to my attention, more than once, that my view of the priesthood, and indeed, the view of the priesthood that is regarded as nromal in a place like Inuvik is not the same view held by many in larger urban areas, such as Moosejaw, and Chicago. “It could be a form of meditative inquiry, certainly. Borges wrote that God moves us as we move the pieces.”

“So it doesn’t matter what we really do?” Bronco says. Jimmy, having committed to his pawn at last, looks up sharply at that. “God takes all the actions?”

“God gives us the game,” I say, deciding to let Jimmy commit to his attack. “And we do not know the unknowable; Borges asked, ‘Which god behind God begets the plot / Of dust and time and dream and agonies?”

Jimmy studies my move with a keen eye, and takes the pawn I left open, but he takes it with his bishop: he’s proving to be a quick study.

“Of dust and time and dream and agonies,” Jimmy repeats. “I like that. It sounds like Shakespeare.”

“He said Bacon,” Bronco says, watching my hand hover over my pieces.

“Bacon wrote Shakespeare, didn’t he?” Jimmy says.

“That theory’s bogus,” Bronco says. I launch a new gambit at the other end of the board, a transparent feint. “I heard it’s that Marlowe guy.”

“Marlowe was stabbed to death in a tavern brawl in 1593,” I say, watching as Jimmy rightly ignores my feint and pursues his bishop stratagem. “At least three quarters of the canon was written after his death.”

“ _Most_ of it was written after he died,” Bronco says. “I heard they faked his death so he could keep writing.”

“But would Marlowe – or Bacon, for that matter – have made the sorts of classical errors Shakespeare made? I believe it was Thomson who pointed out that Shakespeare had an adequate classical education for the time but displayed little actual knowledge of classical learning.” I abandon my feint: Jimmy is setting a trap for me and it seems churlish to ignore it.

“Why would they fake his death?” Jimmy says, watching with barely suppressed enthusiasm as I take the bait. “Wouldn't they figure it out if he just kept writing?”

“Yeah,” Bronco says. “It’s a lot of trouble to go to when you think about it. Like that knight hanging out over there, _esé_.”

Jimmy pulls his hand back abruptly and goes back to studying the board. Bronco and I continue to trade Shakespeare theories: de Vere, Manners, even Raleigh, as Jimmy evades one trap and successfully executes his own. The conversation naturally turns to why people believe what they believe, with some sidelong glances when the conversation veers too close to religion and morality. Shakespeare is safer ground, on the whole. As we set up yet another game, Jimmy shakes his head. “Sounds like you can believe what you want,” he says. “They got Shakespeare’s name on everything, but it’s not enough.”

“I know,” I say. “‘I speak and speak, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting… It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.’”

“Now that’s Shakespeare!” Jimmy says.

“I like that,” Bronco says again. “I like that. That’s how we hear what we want.”

“It’s a conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan,” I say. “Italo Calvino. We bring our own experiences to every story, every situation, in fact.”

“So it’s not so much what we want to hear, but what we don’t know we can’t hear,” Jimmy says.

“Yeah,” Bronco says. “I think that’s it.” He carefully takes a scrap of paper from his wallet and writes down the books as Jimmy enthusiastically launches a new attack. We pass much of the afternoon in chess and conversation, so much so that I nearly forget where I am until they look at their watches and come to an unspoken agreement that it is time for me to resume my captivity. I thank them, wholeheartedly, for the chess as well as the conversation. Bronco nods and Jimmy smiles, shy and genuine. As the key turns in the lock, I sink to the mattress. Perhaps I should be worried but I feel a sense of joy, and with it a sense of peace: this matter is out of my hands – if it was ever in them – and in God’s.

Which is where, perhaps, it ought to have been left to begin with.

As soon as I have that thought, I reject it violently. I would not have turned Ray over to those men, no matter what he’d done. I would not turn anyone over to them, and certainly never someone who sought sanctuary, sought God’s mercy and not the judgement of man. Judgement is God’s sphere, not ours.

Which conclusion leaves me, somewhat fatalistically, with no choice but to pray my gifted rosary for all of us to enjoy God’s mercy.

I am thus occupied when raised voices impinge on my consciousness from the other side of the metal door. It has fallen dark outside. It’s the logical time for a shift change in my guards.

But while I should be grateful that Jimmy and Bronco get a chance to go home, to sleep, it is with some dread I hear Gravina’s voice, and another, unfamiliar to me. On the other hand, if his intentions are fell, he might not risk carrying them out with witnesses.

It’s a slim and unrealistic hope, but I am nothing if not self deluding. If nothing else, the past week has provided ample evidence of that particular flaw in my character.

The raised voices stop abruptly and then there are sounds at the door. I close my eyes and grip my rosary more tightly, drawing strength from the words and the feel of the beads in my hands.

I have eschewed the blanket, feeling that Gravina would see its use as a sign of weakness. Clearly he expects my nakedness to shame me, to leave me feeling vulnerable, forgetting perhaps (if he ever knew) that Our Lord saw nothing shameful in the naked forms of His first creations.

The man with Gravina is unfamiliar to me. He doesn’t seem to belong with them; he seems almost to be a bureaucrat, but of course that’s nonsense. He must be part of their organization, however, to be trusted with the secret of my captivity; perhaps he’s in their bookkeeping department.

I see two other figures in the room beyond, but in the dim light I can’t tell who they are.

“No angels yet, Father?” Gravina asks.

I loop my rosary around my wrist and get to my feet slowly. “Since this is no lion’s den, I hardly see the necessity.”

The other man chuckles, while Gravina flushes. I would curse my unruly tongue – why can’t I keep from antagonizing him? – but again that sense of fatalistic unreality grips me. I simply can’t seem to care.

Gravina turns to the other man. “Seen enough?”

“It’ll do,” the man says with a shrug. I note he has a gold tie clip in the shape of an oval, and that his suit is both expensive and well cut. He seems to have a cigar case in his jacket. Gravina sees me looking and steps between me and the man departing. Through the door I catch sight of Jimmy, looking anxiously at me.

They pull the door shut but they don’t bar it; and sure enough, after a few minutes of conversation, in lower tones this time, the door opens and Gravina comes back in. He seems to have regained his temper.

“No sign of your friend yet, Father, but it hasn’t been too long. Let’s hope he doesn’t hang you out to dry.”

I, of course, hope he does, and that he has more sense than he’s displayed thus far — risking himself, as I’ve now learned, simply to play chess with me? — to avoid such an obvious trap. “Since you are entirely mistaken, I doubt very much that your hoped-for result will materialize,” I say as firmly as I can.

Gravina’s smile fades and he takes a step or two nearer to me. “Your attitude is not conciliatory, Father,” he hisses. “ _No one_ knows you’re here. You can disappear forever and no one will ever know.”

It’s a sign of weakness when a threat is made explicit. A truly dangerous man is one who doesn’t feel the need to fill a silence, or so my father always says.

“If Our Blessed Mother could protect us from an atomic bomb, what makes you think I fear you... or death?”

Behind Gravina, Jimmy actually genuflects, seemingly unaware of his actions.

Gravina reaches behind him to pull the door closed. In the last moment before he’s blocked from my view, I see St. Christopher close his eyes and sink to both knees.

  



	8. Cura Personalis

The voices outside continue for some time, but the door doesn’t open again. I’m vaguely grateful; I don’t think St. Christopher could handle the truth of his eyes. I close mine, willing the throbbing away, grateful for the cool floor and the darkness surrounding me like a blanket, my mind drifting to another time and place.

It was spring thaw, I remember that. I remember two men coming to visit, one a friend of my father’s; they disappeared inside with my mother and I went back to playing in the meltwater streams. I remember my father behind a large boulder: he must have waited so patiently until I got that close, close enough he could whisper my name and I hear him. He told me not to look at him or Buck, and he told me to go inside and tell my mother I needed help in the bathroom. I was obedient, but I remember how my steps dragged all the way to the door because I was building a weir in one of the larger streams and I didn’t want to leave it. 

My mother was sitting on a chair and the two men were sitting across the table from her. No one was talking; they seemed to be waiting for something. My mother stood up to tell me to go back outside but I told her I had to use the bathroom. She looked at me, and somehow I knew something was very wrong, worse even than I’d thought when my father told me not to look at him. I stamped my foot at her and pitched my voice high – something I had never done in living memory – and repeated that I had to use the bathroom _now_. 

One of the men laughed, the one I didn’t know, and told my mother to take her “baby boy” to the bathroom. Once inside the bathroom, the door closed, my mother hugged me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. Under her breath she told me to nod if my father was outside. I did, and then I nodded again and she knew that Uncle Buck was there too. She crossed herself – I had never seen her do that before – and then fell to her knees and told me to whine, to complain about the bathroom, to throw a temper tantrum, and all the time she was hugging me. 

I stamped my foot again; I couldn’t think of anything to whine about so I made my voice fretful and complained that the bathroom was too small. My mother laughed, her hand over her mouth, her eyes alight, and handed me some toilet paper. I complained about that as well, and then, greatly daring, began to complain about the wooden toilet seat, and oatmeal every morning, and the recent lack of bananas. My mother meanwhile eased the lock closed on the bathroom door and then got into the tub, fully clothed. I stared at her, mouth agape: her shoes were still on. She motioned to me to keep going and she pulled me into the bathtub with her. 

From the other side of the door I could hear a low hum of conversation, a chuckle or two. 

Then there was a crash, and gunshots, shouts, and, frighteningly, banging. My mother held me tight, crouched down in the tub,my face pressed against her shoulder, and I heard her whispering, “Blessed art thou among women…” 

Then we heard my father’s voice on the other side of the door. My mother picked me up and ran to the door. I remember seeing her hand shaking as she unlocked it: I was far too heavy for her by that time. 

The men were handcuffed and Uncle Buck was leading them outside. The man I didn’t know was bleeding from the shoulder, and the kitchen window was shattered. I had no more time than that to take anything in because my father had us both wrapped tight in his arms, and he and my mother were crying. 

We moved again, after that, north and west this time, to Inuvik, where my father accepted a permanent posting. He and my grandparents must have settled something, because they stayed, too, and suddenly we lived in a town, with people, a school – other children. I’m sure my father wasn’t always happy about giving up what he loved about the posting in Yellowknife, especially the wide-ranging patrols, but he never seemed unhappy or resentful. Not long after, Uncle Buck and his family joined us, he and my father sharing command of the posting, and our family was complete. 

My mother, whose parents left Northern Ireland because (she said) their love was more important than their differing religions, was raised in Havre [or Butte], Montana, with a mixture of Catholic and Protestant beliefs. But she said that Mary and St. Michael had delivered us because she had prayed the rosary the whole time the men were in the house with her; and despite my grandparents’ disapproval – obvious even to the boy that I was – she began attending Mass whenever the priest was in Inuvik. 

In my ninth year, the almost-new church was blessed with a permanent priest and after that I was tumbled headlong into my mother’s rekindled passion. I spent years following my parents’ dueling passions: first one, then the other. They never meant me to have to choose; but finally God did.

All of which has led me here, now, bruised in body, bleeding in spirit, and consecrated to God, on the floor of an abandoned warehouse.

I find mirthless laughter rising to my lips as I finally lift myself onto the mattress: “mysterious” is an understatement for these particular ways, Lord. I feel behind me for the blanket; wincing, I pull it around my shoulders. I sit cross-legged on the mattress, closing my eyes and imagining myself back in Inuvik. The last time I talked to my mother, they’d had snow already; I can almost smell the crisp air, the wood smoke from the bonfires we’d have before winter set in, in earnest. We’d sit around them, in coats and mittens, wrapped in blankets too, just as I am. 

I can hear the crackle of the fire; the low murmur of conversation. I can see the sparks flying upwards, caught in the updraft, when one of us leaned in to poke at the fire or put another log on it. We would have already eaten; sometimes marshmallows were passed around. And then someone would start singing, usually my father, or Buck, a second father to me in every way: “Oh, the year was 1778, how I wish I was in Sherbrooke now…” 

We’d all join in. Buck would yip, and my friends and I would too: Buck’s daughter Julie,Mark, sometimes Eric, sometimes too Innussiq and June. I open my eyes and gaze into the darkness: I can see the fire in front of me, smell the wood smoke. There’s my father, sitting next to Buck, my mother on the other side of him, and Buck’s wife, Maureen, next to her. I look across to my father and he catches my eye and grins at me as he starts the next verse: “Oh, Elcid Barrett cried the town…” I lift my voice and join in; Buck winks at me and sits up straighter. My mother opens her mouth, her voice soft but clear. Behind my father, there’s my grandmother and grandfather, and my grandmother nods at me, a short, sharp nod, approving; and I sit up straighter, myself, breathing as she taught me so my notes stay true: “…and a cook in the scuppers with the staggers and jags, God damn them all, I was told…” 

My grandparents died within a few weeks of each other, soon after I joined the RCMP; I miss my grandfather to this day. While my grandmother filled my toy box with any and all seditious reading matter known to man – an appropriate training, had she but known it, for a future Jesuit – it was he who taught all of us the songs, and the poetry, and the rhythm of language. He knew every Robert Service poem from start to finish. One memorable evening he recited over twenty-five of them, stopping for barely a drink between, starting with _Blasphemous Bill_ and ending with _The Men Who Don’t Fit In_. He also knew Kipling; but after we all moved to Inuvik – after my father and Buck discovered and exposed the corruption behind a proposed hydroelectric dam, the reason my mother was being held hostage, her life threatened, by a fellow Mountie – he never recited Kipling again, not even _The Children_ , which had been a favourite. My father never knew why, nor did any of us, even at the end. We read Robert Service at his funeral, eschewing Kipling out of respect. 

The last of poor Barrett’s privateers finishes his lament; Buck raises his voice in one of his own favourites, and I join in with the rest: “…born up north of Great Slave in 1898.” Buck was, in fact, born north of Great Slave; he always starts the song, “As you know–” The memory makes me choke, and miss the next line, but no one notices, and I regain my composure and forge onward. This song was always Mark’s favorite too; he’d smack two logs together, to approximate the sound of a whip cracking, and he and I would try to out-bellow each other when we got to the “run like stink” line. 

“Four Strong Winds” is next: Buck and my father have always sung it as a duet, and it’s not hard to imagine how they’d perfected their version during their years on patrol. Their voices merge almost perfectly as they sing about the seven seas that run high; the rest of us join in softly for the ending. Then my grandfather catches my eye and nods at me; I feel a frisson run up my spine and I join in with him, in a song that pours our hearts out into the wide and savage land we love: “Ah, for just one time, I would take the Northwest Passage…”

The tears are standing in my eyes at the last. They often do, but tonight the words seem to be speaking to and from my heart, a conversation that my head is no part of, and hasn’t been; not since I smelled the wood smoke and tasted the snow on the air. What _have_ I been seeking at the call of many men? For so many years I’ve thought it was one thing; but now the road back home – well, it’s found me, at least at this moment, at least in this small comfort that my heart has conjured up. My throat has closed up and it’s all I can do to manage the last chorus, but my friends and family are singing too and we finish it out. 

Maureen gets to her feet, patting me on the head as she passes by. Buck starts up a chorus of “Good Night, Maureen,” as everyone gets to their feet. My grandparents fade away, there one moment and gone the next. The rest stamp their feet on the ground while Buck catches my eye and winks at me again. “Good night, Benton,” my father says, as if he’s standing right beside me. I drag my arm across my eyes and when I open them again, the room is empty, the fire gone, the snow too. 

I’m alone again, the thin acrylic blanket around my shoulders. But the despair has lifted from my soul, and I feel my eyes beginning to close as sleep hovers nearby. I hug the edge of the mattress so my arm can touch the ground; the cool floor can substitute for snow, at least at this moment. 

Sleep comes quickly, a small mercy, and my last conscious thought is of how the sun sparkled on the water as it flowed over and through the weirs I built.


	9. Anima Christi

I’m wakened in the morning by the rattle of the door lock. It’s Jimmy  – Bronco is nowhere to be seen — and he looks miserable, his dark hair hanging lank about his face, shadows under his eyes, looking much older than his years. He has a worn towel and a bandanna, and he tells me in a gruff voice, his accent more pronounced than usual, to wash because the hot water is now working. I take advantage of the opportunity, cleaning myself as best I can with the bandanna, trying to ignore the aches and the bruises. He clearly does not want to speak to me, saying nothing as I return to my cell: my cheerful companion of the day before is gone, submerged in sorrow and worry.

Worry that I too must set aside.

_ The next time _ ...

I say the  _ Anima Christi _ , slowly and deliberately, meditating on each sentence, staring at myself in the cracked mirror unflinchingly.

There’s a hesitant rap on the door, and I’m not surprised to see that it’s Jimmy who’s opening it. 

“Breakfast,” he says, still avoiding my eyes. “In there.”

Bronco, returned from his mysterious errand to obtain my breakfast,  is holding a chair for me; Jimmy, in the meantime, has retrieved my fluffy blue blanket and hands it to me before I sit down. When I thank them, and bow my head to thank God for this provision, I notice their exchange of glances, looking even more uncomfortable than previously. I want to reassure them but I can’t muster words: they would sound false.

Breakfast must have come from a diner and is eggs, bacon, and toast, still warm and fresh, and I thank them again when I finish. They don’t respond, nor do they allow me to strike up a conversation this time. Bronco ushers me back into my cell after handing me another bottle of water to keep me company.

I don’t need company; my thoughts are sufficient unto this day. I still feel detached from myself, as if I am outside looking in, as I was last night, not fully “within.” Perhaps this perspective is a gift from Inuvik; or perhaps from Our Blessed Mother. If the latter, it seems a propitious time to begin a novena. If it is God’s will, I’ll be able to complete it at St. Michael’s.

I have just begun the last Hail Mary of my penance when there is the vibration, the sound of a vehicle. I feel it through my knees and my feet, and without thinking I pull the blanket closer, anticipating Gravina’s return.

I don’t need company; my thoughts are sufficient unto this day. I still feel detached from myself, as if I am outside looking in, as I was last night, not fully “within.” Perhaps this perspective is a gift from Inuvik; or perhaps from Our Blessed Mother. If the latter, it seems a propitious time to begin a novena. If it is God’s will, I’ll be able to complete it at St. Michael’s.

I have just begun the last Hail Mary of my penance when there is the vibration, the sound of a vehicle. I feel it through my knees and my feet, and without thinking I pull the blanket closer, anticipating Gravina’s return.

And it is indeed he; I recognize his voice as he greets the two men standing guard. The next sound is the clatter of my door lock, and by the time the door opens, the blanket is folded and on the foot of the bed, and I’m standing: I will not show him fear.

He seems in a worse mood than the day before, and again I see St. Christopher, and this time Bronco as well, watching closely. When Gravina glances over his shoulder at them, neither moves back, a small but subtle challenge. Then when Gravina looks back at me, oddly enough I see Bronco check his watch.

“Still no word from your friend, Father,” Gravina says conversationally. “I guess he’s hanging you out to dry.”

“Since there is no ’we,’” I say, coldly and duplicitously, “there is no reason for him to send word. I’ve told you repeatedly you’re wasting your time.”

“Oh, it hasn’t been a _waste_ , Father,” he says, more quietly than before, the leer in his voice unmistakeable. “Far from it.”

As he moves closer to me, St. Christopher moves forward too. Gravina catches the motion out of the corner of his eye and laughs loudly. “You want to watch, Jimmy? Good lesson for you, don’t you think?”

“He’s a priest, Sal,” and to my surprise it’s Bronco challenging Gravina and not Jimmy. “You better let it alone. If Vinny finds out–”

“Finds out what, Bronco? That I’m asking a man some questions? Vinny couldn’t care less how I get information, and that’s a lesson you all got to learn.” He points to each of us in turn. “If I want to fuck him, I fuck him. If I want to fuck _you_ , I fuck you. If I want to fuck Jimmy, Jimmy gets on his knees and thanks me for it. Being a priest’s got nothing to do with it. They’re doing each other all the time anyhow, and any little boys they can find while they’re at it. Don’t be more stupid than you have to. They’re no different from us.”

And, indeed, he is partly right: for one brief moment, all I can hear is Ray’s voice, urgent, passionate, his breath warm against my skin, words spilling out, telling me that I’m _his_ , that he _wants_ me…

But– 

“There is a difference,” I say, more to Bronco and Jimmy than to Gravina. “God examines our hearts, and our intentions. There are wicked priests, and there are good men. The difference is not in our vows but in how we live our lives in accordance with God’s will, in the choices we make.”

Jimmy makes the sign of the cross and Bronco, holding my eye, nods firmly. Gravina, crossing to me, backhands me hard across the face. I kick him hard behind the knee with the side of my foot. He punches me but I’m quick enough to duck and he lands only a glancing blow, but he follows with his other fist, dropping me to my knees again. Another blow follows, this time to my already-abused left kidney, and as he raises his fist again, a shot suddenly rings out. 

Bronco stands in the doorway, his weapon aimed at the ceiling. “Enough!” he says harshly. “That’s enough, Sal!”

The roar of an engine, followed immediately by the sound of breaking glass, is almost anticlimactic, but all three men turn to look at the outer room, and I see my chance to tackle Gravina and secure his weapon, which he had just begun to draw in response to Bronco, and pat him down quickly, ensuring he has no other weapons concealed on his person. I’ve never, myself, run across anyone with a boot gun, but my father and my uncle often lament the decline in the calibre of modern (alleged) perpetrators that – they maintain – has led to a curtailment of boot weapons. 

Somehow I’m not surprised to see Ray appear in the doorway; Ray, followed closely by another man, tall, with an olive complexion and a well-cut suit, his balding head close shaven. He, too, is holding a gun but he’s also, to my surprise, holding up his badge until he catches my eye; he gives me a small nod and tucks it away again into his suit jacket.

“You okay?” Ray says, suddenly there, kneeling next to me, putting an arm around my shoulder briefly, then pulling a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“Not yours,” the tall man says. “He’s mine.”

Beneath my knee, Gravina sags suddenly, as if this sudden changein his circumstances has become clear to him all at once.

It feels _good_.

“Miranda?” Ray says over his shoulder, holding out a hand to help me to my feet and reaching for Gravina’s weapon, still dangling from my fingers.

“Nah, don’t bother,” the tall man says impatiently, cuffing Gravina with a roughness that affords me some inward satisfaction. He takes Gravina’s weapon from Ray, emptying the clip almost absent-mindedly as he continues to talk. “Take him and get out of here. That was the deal. Well, actually, the deal was you keep your skinny ass undercover instead of going all Steve McQueen on a motorcycle just because you heard one gunshot. Christ, you’re worse than a fucking rookie.”

“You’d know, Vecchio,” Ray says without any particular animosity. “How many rookies you been paired with now? You hit double digits yet?”

“...guys?” Bronco says, his voice sounding much smaller than a few moments ago. Jimmy, who hasn’t said a word, is staring from Bronco to Vecchio to Ray; he’s clutching his St. Christopher medal and his face is pale.

“You wipe your fingerprints down,” Ray says without looking at him. “And you get out of here.” He holds the detective’s gaze as if challenging him. Detective Vecchio stares back, then shrugs faintly.

“Already did,” Bronco says.

“Out. Out, out, out,” Ray snaps, flicking his fingers at them, and, after looking at each other and then me, they leave.

“I’m not going to shoot _them_ ,” Detective Vecchio says reproachfully, and I’m near enough to him now to see a smile in his eyes, which are unexpectedly warm.

“Detective Vecchio, I presume?” I say, holding out my hand.

He looks me up and down, raises an eyebrow, then shrugs again and takes my hand. “I take it you’re the priest Kowalski got his pants in a bunch about. I can see why, or at least I could if you weren’t a priest. Ray Vecchio. Pleasure to meet you, etc.”

“ _Kowalski_ …” Gravina repeats slowly. “Fuck you. _Fuck_ you. You’re a _dead_ man, you fucking–”

“Look at the corpse talking,” Detective Vecchio says, and suddenly his eyes are no longer warm.

“Vecchio – ”

“That was the deal, Kowalski. You’re in, so you’re out. Out, out, out.” His imitation of Ray is so pitch perfect that it brings an involuntary smile to my lips.

Ray shrugs and turns to me, his eyes flickering briefly as he takes in my smile, as if he expected something else; and I quickly compose my features. “I got you some clothes. Come get dressed.”

“Do not take him to a hospital unless you need to,” Detective Vecchio says from behind us. “You get gone and you stay gone. Things might get ugly.”

“You’re not going to shut down Vinny,” Gravina says belligerently.

Neither of them glances at him. “If we’re lucky. You think they’ll move _this_ time?”

“How would I know?” Detective Vecchio says with an elaborately casual shrug. “I’m just a cop who got... lucky.”

“Which one of those fuckers rolled?” Gravina says belligerently. Ray touches my shoulder, guiding me to the outer room, and I try – without absolutely no success – not to feel a moment of satisfaction at the sound of a grunt of pain; I’d noticed the toes on Detective Vecchio’s shoes were somewhat pointed. Ray is digging in one of the motorcycle’s saddlebags, and then he hands me a bundle of clothes: jeans, boxers, a shirt, even a worn leather jacket. 

“Don’t worry,” Ray says, mistaking my interest for concern. “Gravina won’t get anything out of him. Are you okay?” He catches my chin, the way I caught his – was it just last week? – and turns my face to the light. “Did he rape you? If he did, we’ll go to the hospital.” 

His voice is so matter of fact that I’m able to respond with equal frankness, quelling the momentary panic that rises in my breast. “No; the other two intervened.”

“Okay,” he says, running a gentle thumb across the swollen part of my cheek. Then he releases me to dress as he goes to rummage in the opposite saddlebag. “We should get going. Here’s boots and socks.”

I have some concern about leaving Detective Vecchio, competent as he, to deal with Gravina on his own. “What about–” I jerk my head towards the inner room as I pull the jeans on: Gravina can still be heard, blustering and threatening.

“That was our deal, Fraser,” he interrupts, his voice remote, watching me button the shirt. “You get involved with the Mob, things happen you can’t always control, and sometimes you got to just roll with it.”

“Like St. Christopher,” I say, almost to myself, pulling on the other sock, then kneeling with a wince to tie the laces on the worn hiking boot: he did remarkably well at guessing my size. Ray looks at me quizzically; perhaps he thinks I’m hallucinating, and he leans in close to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Jimmy?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, he’s in way over his head.”

“So Bronco was yours?” I say just loud enough for Ray to hear. 

He grins quickly, unexpectedly, and squeezes my shoulder. “I think he was, you know, _yours_.”

“Tick tick, gentlemen,” Detective Vecchio says from close behind us, and Ray straightens up, his hand falling to his side as I too stand. “Better hope that piece of shit starts, Kowalski. I don’t know how I’m going to explain it if it doesn’t.” 

“I’m a pro,” Ray says. 

“That’s what I hear, but you know me, I’m no gossip.”

“Thanks,” Ray says quietly, gripping Detective Vecchio’s hand for a long moment. “I might owe you one.”

“I lost count,” Detective Vecchio says. “Out. I don’t need to tell you to lay low. If we can’t do the usual, go through Dr. Longball. You both stay put until you hear from one of us – and _only_ us. There’s more going on–”

“Hello, not a _rookie_ , Vecchio.”

“Just an _asshole_ , Kowalski.”

The steps that lead from the basement are shallow, and there are only a few, but I help him push the motorcycle up them nonetheless. Ray glances over his shoulder at the doorway, but it remains empty; Detective Vecchio is clearly taking no chances. I take in the window, broad and low, that Ray put his motorcycle through. I would never have thought to risk it, nor, I suspect, would the detective we’ve left behind; the tone in his voice, though teasing, had carried an undercurrent of admiration. The motorcycle starts; Ray flashes a grin at me, quick, victorious – blinding in its beauty – and jerks his chin at his shoulder. Without hesitation I climb on behind him, putting both arms around his waist; it’s much the same as a snowmobile, I surmise. 

The roar of the motorcycle is deafening; it takes me a moment to realise he’s gunning the motor, gunning it on purpose – to attract attention? To drown out the sound of a gun firing, twice, behind us? 

Did he know? Did he suspect? He must have; and yet he trusted – trusts – the man: Detective Vecchio.

He turns his head, almost as if he hears my thoughts: “No,” he says harshly, loud enough for me to hear. “Leave it.” 

“It’s… not in my nature,” I say into the wind, probably futilely. 

“Mine either,” he says, so quietly I almost don’t hear him, but the engine is running smoothly now; and in the distance I think I hear sirens wailing. “Hang on.” 

And I do: I hang on, resisting temptation all the while to bury my forehead in his back, between his shoulder blades, to close out the world, to shut myself away from my life… and from his. Instead I content myself with resting my chin on his shoulder, inhaling his scent, closing my eyes from time to time to luxuriate in the nearness of him, the warmth and the strength of his lithe body; the change in my fortune has left the world so wide, so open, that I can’t encompass it, and I don’t try to; all that’s important is here, now, wrapped in my arms. 


	10. Ad audiendas confessiones

He’s careful: it takes me longer than it normally would to realize he’s circling, leapfrogging and zig-zagging, as we’re making our way through derelict buildings, warehouses so deserted even the railroad tracks have been torn out or paved over, drainage ditches choked with weeds and broken cement. Thus it doesn’t surprise me when he cuts the motor near a plastic overhang. 

“Motorcycles are more forgiving than horses,” I say, following him for lack of a more cogent impetus.

He grins over his shoulder, suddenly lightening the atmosphere immeasurably. “Quieter too, sometimes.” 

“Indeed.” 

But the plastic overhang isn’t attached to the building he eventually makes for, and I think of my father, and Quinn, tracking caribou. 

The building we enter is in no better shape, from the outside, than the others: six stories of brick in need of more than tucking and pointing, large windows, many with no glass and few boards across them; and on the main floor an old ceiling hoist running on tracks the width of the building. 

“Pretty quiet here,” he says. “The hobos left when they took out the rail and everyone else already forgot.” 

“Have you lived here long?” I say, more to fill the silence – no, be truthful, at least now: I want to know, I want desperately to know everything about him, and all I know is his name – and that only because of the man whose warm green eyes seemingly belie his cold-blooded nature. 

But Ray laughs, quietly, but laughs all the same, and the weight lifts from my spirit. “Couple years, off and on. It’s handy.” 

Particularly if you’re wont to play both sides of organized crime against the middle, I don’t say. 

“Four flights up,” he says, holding a door open for me. “Think you can make it? Sometimes I can get the freight elevator to work.” 

Thus recalled to a sense of its injured importance, my kidney throbs. “I’m fine,” I say, more to myself than him. 

He doesn’t look particularly convinced but he does lead the way up the dim stairwell. 

I expected him to be using an inner room, but he’s set up a camp of sorts in an enormous south-facing room, near one of the large windows. A blanket hangs to one side; it must be how he hides his presence here after dark. There’s a mattress on the floor with several blankets arranged neatly atop it: he makes his bed, even here. 

Or, perhaps, especially here. 

There’s a small camp stove on a wooden crate, two propane containers beneath it. Another crate holds a pot and a pan, and a set of camping utensils hangs from a hook on the wall. A large Dutch oven on a plastic dairy crate seems to serve as a sink, with several plastic water jugs beneath it, and there’s a small bracketed shelf above it with several cans and packages on it. Under the window is another dairy crate, a kerosene lantern atop it with papers beneath, magazines, distinctive yellow bindings of _National Geographic_ , mostly, it seems, and a tattered seat cushion. A deck of cards is next to it on the floor. 

“There’s a bathroom down the hall,” he says quietly, as if he’s anticipating my reaction and preparing himself. “No running... anything, but there’s a mirror to shave by. I keep the, uh, the chamber pot there.” 

He shrugs out of his jacket as he speaks, and I see the rest of the room: on the other side of the door, there are two more dairy crates stacked atop one another, three cell phones on top along with a tray containing some change and some matchbooks, clothes in the upper compartment, a bundle of black nylon and webbing in the lower with boxes of ammunition and a number of clips stacked beneath it. A line of nails serves as a closet and storage for the holstered pistol he shrugs out of next. On the other side of the crates is a sleeping bag, rolled and tied – and a semiautomatic rifle of military purview, leaning against the wall. 

He follows my gaze and shrugs again, unhappily, at least to my eyes. “They haven’t found me,” he says, and the ’yet’ is implicit. “In fact – well, hey, let’s eat something first. I got tea and coffee, which do you want?” 

I can see the imprint of his shoulder holster against his skin, under the thin fabric of his t-shirt, and the temptation to reach out, to trace the pattern with my fingers, is immediate and almost irresistible. Without thinking I sink to my knees, my hands fisted, and suddenly I hear myself breathing. 

“Catching up with you,” he says sympathetically, and I feel the ghost of a touch across my shoulders, as if he, too, wants to touch and he, too, resists temptation. “Adrenaline. I’ll make some tea, safer now anyway. There’s Tylenol on top of the dresser there,” and I’m in time to catch his head jerk towards the stack of crates by the door. “Take some, you need it. The water under the sink’s safe to drink, it’s been treated.” 

His casual acceptance is almost as confusing as his proximity: what in his life has led him to deal so adroitly not only with rescues themselves – my fists unclench of their own volition to finger the clothes he brought me almost before I realize it – but with those he rescues? 

“I mean it,” he says, still quietly, and I realize the care he must take to live here, knowing sounds travel: it’s almost as if he’s a prisoner himself. “Take some Tylenol, stretch out, give yourself a chance to breathe.” 

Almost without meaning to, I find myself uncapping the bottle; Ray, who’s started the camp stove, hands me an enameled mug of water. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says conversationally, watching me swallow the water and the pills. “Probably could have stopped for takeout, we had time. But I got beans, hash... chili, yeah. Anything sound good?” 

“Anything,” I say, heartfelt, and indeed the meanest tin of canned peas would seem like ambrosia at this moment: Ray, freedom, and (relative) safety; and the fact that at least one man may be dead doesn’t seem to be weighing on my conscience as it should. 

“Hash,” he says with another shrug. “Like it matters. Take a load off.” 

“I think I’ll use the facilities, if I may.” 

“ _Mi casa_ ,” he says, opening a tin with, apparently, his fingers; it takes me a few moments to realize it’s a P-38. 

“This isn’t what I expected at all,” I say, quite without meaning to. 

He looks up at that, a brief, genuine smile flickering from his lips to his eyes. “You thought maybe running water, at least? Or gates with Rottweilers and armed guards?” 

“The former more than the latter,” I say, not exactly untruthfully but mostly to see him smile again, to see his face relax again even as the diminishing light deepens the lines around his eyes and mouth. 

“We’ll go up on the roof when it gets dark,” he says with that quick grin again. “Shop class came in handier than I thought.” 

The bathroom is as desolate as the rest of the building: an empty light socket hangs from the center of the room; none of the stalls has a door, and only one sink is intact. But there’s light from the window and, again, a plastic jug of water on the floor by it. I look around and find the aforementioned “chamber pot,” in reality simply another pot in one of the dry toilets; it’s apparent he uses the urinals appropriately, so I mimic him. The pain on urination has further diminished, a good sign. I make an attempt at washing my hands, one hand at a time and with bar soap that reminds me of my grandmother, drying my hands on the borrowed (begged? stolen?) jeans. 

There’s a cup of tea waiting on the floor by the bed when I return so finally I sit, crossing my legs enough to lean over. He stirs the hash and glances at me. “Weird to see you in, you know, pants.” 

“I imagine so,” I say after a moment and a sip of the tea, not yet ready but too alluring to resist. “I haven’t thanked you sufficiently for your forethought.” 

He dishes the hash out, dividing it between a plate and a bowl. “Yeah,” he says meaninglessly. 

The hash is delicious, at least to me, and Ray scrapes the remainder of his into my bowl. “Eat,” he says. “Lick the plate. Less washing that way.” 

I miss being teased, I realize suddenly. 

I’ve missed so very many things. 

“You okay?” he says, perhaps mistaking my silence for discomfort. 

“I was wondering if it would be rude to lick the pan too.” 

He relaxes immediately and laughs, throwing his head back. “Knock yourself out, Fraser.” 

“I like it here,” I say, gathering up the dishes. 

“Yeah, I figured you would,” he says wryly. “You got running water at least, though, right?” 

“The plumbing seems to weigh heavily on your mind.” 

“I never thought I’d be digging a slit trench in the middle of Chicago,” he says, shaking his head. 

“I wondered if you’d been in the armed forces,” I say quietly and with perfect truth. 

“Kind of hard to miss, huh?” 

“It’s the ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat,” and suddenly I’m shaken by the memory of him – of us – in the confessional, and I have to take a steadying breath. 

“I did four years,” he says, apparently not noticing my lack of composure. “Something to be said for it.” 

“Generally speaking.” 

“Let me do those,” he says, taking the dishes from me. “I’ve got a system.”

Of course he does, and it’s unsurprisingly accomplished with minimal water and fuss. 

“I rigged a rain-catcher on the roof,” he says, squatting next to me as I drain the last of the tea. “I’ll show you when it gets darker. Water purification tablets are on the shelf. You should be drinking more than you are. I saw your back.” 

His words are matter of fact but his tone of voice isn’t, and suddenly I can’t find my own voice. 

“You okay?” he says again. “Seriously. You pissing blood or anything? ’Cause if you are, we’ll hit an emergency room in Indiana.” 

“No,” I say firmly: the risks seem suddenly to have multiplied, the room closing in, the corners dark and the shadows impossibly long. 

“Not the time to hear it,” he says, leaning in closer, his hand reaching – and then he leans back, folding his arms onto his knees. “Kind of thing you can’t afford to tough out, Fraser, that’s all I’m saying. You look like he did a number on you.” 

I know, I want to say; but I can’t find the words. 

“And you were... lucky,” he whispers, and the pain in his voice robs his words of their sting. 

I know. 

I _know_. 

“I know you know,” he says, and this time he does grasp my arm, firmly, as if he’s shaking my hand. “I was – just I was worried, you know, and when I saw…” 

“I’m sorry,” I manage, and then I give in, all at once, and pull him in close, hugging him the way he hugged me in my prison, the way my mother hugged me that long-ago day. 

He hugs me back, but soon – too soon – he pulls back, pushing me onto to the mattress, rocking back on his heels. 

“I know,” he says again. “I do, I promise. It’s okay now. It’ll be okay. I’ll make you more tea.” 

“I don’t want tea.” 

“Maybe not, but–” 

“You don’t–” 

“Understand?” he interrupts, his voice suddenly remote. “Yeah. I do. And even if I didn’t, you’re a priest, Fraser. You’re a real priest, and it means something to you even if it doesn’t mean anything to me.” 

“I’m not sure… who I am,” I say, closing my eyes, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “What…” 

His hand is on my shoulder again, warm, strong, comforting; and I feel the gentle brush of his thumb on the back of my neck.

“I didn’t… I thought I had the gift, the blessing, of chastity,” I say in a rush, finding the courage somewhere to go on. “I never wanted… I didn’t want to touch... I didn’t want to do... anything. I thought… I never thought it might be… me. I thought–” and that’s the cardinal sin, putting myself in the forefront, not God, putting what I wanted before God’s plan, thinking it was _my_ plan because it all dovetailed so nicely– 

“Some people don’t just sleep with anyone, Fraser,” he says quietly, still gripping my shoulder. “That doesn’t mean you were wrong about your gift. It meant that God was more important to you than… well, other things.” 

“I never wanted to,” I whisper. “Not until… now. And now… now I can’t think of anything, I can’t think of God, I can’t think of my holy obligations – I can’t think of anything. But… us. _You_.” 

Astonishingly he grins, his teeth glinting in the dim light, and he gives me a little shake. “No offense, Fraser, but I think you’d feel that way about anyone who rang your bells the first time.” 

My throat is tight, but the words squeeze out. “Ray, you – I think you rang my bells from the first moment I met you.” 

“Fraser,” he says, quiet and serious. “Look... I mean it.” 

“So do I,” I whisper, leaning close in: I’m trembling and I don’t care; I’m hell-bound and I don’t care about that either; all I want is to know the taste of him, the feel of him, again and– 

His hand on my chest is not enough to recall me to sanity, nor are his words: “Enough,” he whispers back, his voice so strained my own throat aches momentarily in sympathy. “Fraser, c’mon. Please. I’m not made of – I can’t–” 

“ _Please_ ,” I say in his ear, pressing my advantage; how did I learn this, how do I know this, the insidious language of seduction? Indeed, our sinful nature is inborn, ever since Eve tempted Adam to that forbidden taste, as aware as I am that her actions were wrong, yet unable to resist, unwilling to return to that ignorant bliss. 

“...God,” Ray whispers, swallowing hard, pushing harder; but his fingers are entangled in my shirt. “You gotta stop, Fraser, you _have_ to, because I–” 

I can’t. I _won’t_. 

The skin beneath his ear is warm, warm and soft, and I seek out his scent, his taste, with my tongue; his fingers curl into my shirt, no longer pushing me away, instead pulling me in. 

His lips find mine, or mine his: it doesn’t matter. And I know this, now: I know why Eve ate of the apple, and I know, too, why Adam shared it; but, like Eve, I am unrepentant, I would not turn back; I will not turn back. Let Adam hide himself, cowering, from God’s wrath; I will own myself, and I would ask God why this was denied. 

His eyes are only half open when our lips part, reluctantly; he looks as dazed as I feel. But – still – words of protest rise to his lips: I feel rather than hear them, and I put a hand to either side of his face. “In the church,” I whisper, “do you remember? When you–” 

“Jesus,” he says, and I feel his skin heat beneath my fingertips. “Fraser, I’m kind of pink about – look, I was wrong, I’m sorry, Fraser, please believe me, so sorry, I got that so, _so_ wrong and I know it now, I – I mean, what are the odds? But it seemed like – and then you – and then I–” 

“Ray–” 

“–and, yeah, I know, not like you had a chance to _stop_ me ’cause I–” 

“Ray–” 

“–was _crazy_ , okay, because, God, _you_ , and – and _him_ , and I feel like a mutt–” 

“ _Ray_.” And this time I follow words with action, moving my thumb to cover his lips. “You said I was yours… that I should be yours.” And I smooth my thumb across his lips, and he closes his eyes. “Do you remember?” 

“Yeah,” he whispers, “ _mine_ ,” and we’re at once so close again that his assent, breathed, is more felt than heard. 

But it gives me courage, courage I didn’t know I needed, to feel him there, to take this last, irrevocable step: “...I am.” 

And again I’m following him, this time over a cliff and into the unforeseen: he pushes me back and down into the mattress with a sound that can only be called a growl; his hands are everywhere and so are mine, a frenzied and entirely mutual attempt to bare as much skin as quickly as possible. 

But we take a breath at the same moment and he stops, then, one hand splayed across my chest, the other on my shoulder, looking... _looking_. 

And I – I look too, suddenly fearless and altogether curious: his pants are unfastened but not off and his penis rises from the shadows, the end already glistening, golden in the waning light, and I wonder if even Lucifer was as beautiful as this. 

He must have been. 

He couldn’t have been. 

When I look up at him, he’s still looking at me, the hand on my chest slowly moving down almost as if he’s unaware of it. I take a breath and his hand follows the rise and fall of my chest without faltering; and finally I look too, down my body to my groin, to where my penis rises to meet his gaze without shame. 

“I like pussy,” he says hoarsely, still staring at my groin, his hand on my belly now, his thumb rubbing a circle around my navel. “Soft, wet, God, so sweet… but the first time I sucked cock, Fraser, I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t get enough.” Finally he looks back up at me and his lips are shining, moist from that long, wicked tongue, the one that lapped at our commingled seed on my belly, and I’m leaning up before I even realize I’m moving. “Still can’t,” he says against my mouth. “I want...” 

I laugh, surprising even myself: “Please, Ray...” 

But still he hesitates, unsmiling: “The thing is, Fraser, the thing is, there’s no going back. Not – I mean, once I’m in, I’m in, and you might not – so you’ve got to be–” 

“I am.” 

“I’m not sure – I’m not sure you get–” 

“Please,” I say again, firmly, this time without laughing or even smiling. The world is spinning away from me and it’s as if I’m standing outside myself, watching it go and feeling nothing more than impatience. “ _Please_ , Ray. Show me. Show me how it’s supposed to be.” 


	11. Eritis sicut dii

And he does — God, how he does. His lips, his tongue are everywhere, followed by his teeth: down my throat, licking a path to the hollow at the base. His teeth on my collarbone makes me shudder; then his lips, lips and tongue caressing a nipple to a wet, sensitive peak. I arch and moan, breathless; he laughs against my skin and coaxes my other nipple to the same state before he moves even further down, plundering my navel, licking a line down to where the hair thickens between my legs. I was waiting for this; have been waiting, since that first time in the vestry, when he knelt before me and took me to unimagined heights. But it’s clear now that was only the beginning: he pulls sounds and feelings from me I had no knowledge of, mysteries beyond the soul, mysteries of my heart. I arch, breathless; I clutch at his head; he rumbles something deep in his throat and swallows around me and I give up my battle. There’s no need for denial, here; no need to try to hold back, or to prolong this moment, because I see – now – that there will be another, and another after that, a breathless dive, headlong, into eternity, a new understanding that’s remarkably easy to encompass. 

After my world stops spinning – again! – I try to match him, novice that I am. He encourages me with breathless sounds: assent, encouragement, passion; and when I finally muster the courage – my curiosity was already rampant – to take him in my mouth in turn, it’s better than anything I could have imagined. It’s not just the strength of him or the taste of him; it’s the sound of him, groaning my name, the feel of him, writhing on the mattress beneath me, the musky scent of him – of _us_ – as he gasps a warning and then spills into my mouth, into my throat; and I swallow him greedily, hungry for all of it, all of him, just as he swallowed, that day in the church, and again only a few minutes ago.

Afterwards we nap for a while, longer, clearly, than he intended, since he wakes with a start, which in turn wakes me. “Least the moon’ll be up,” he says drowsily, stroking my shoulder almost idly. “Want a shower?” He stretches with a small quiet grunt, and when I nod against his neck he turns his head to kiss my forehead idly, almost as if he’s unaware he’s doing it; and that small intimacy swells my heart almost more than all the rest. His arm tightens around me in a gentle squeeze, his voice a low, quiet murmur. “You’ll have to borrow some of my underwear for now. I got an extra pair of sweats you can use to sleep in.”

And, as unselfconsciously naked as I was (or tried to be), he leads the way with a small MagLite up the two remaining flights of stairs and then one more flight, the steps rickety and wooden, onto the roof. 

There’s an old sheet metal water tower, seemingly derelict, casting a shadow in the moonlight. I can see Ray’s grin as he leads me to it.

“Shower,” he says, quietly but proudly, and I’m reminded once more of how sound can carry, even on a still night. “It’s warm; it’s a solar bag that stores the heat. It’s only fifteen gallons but, hey, bonus: we can shower together.” 

And even in the moonlight, his grin is warm and intimate.

The next thing I know I’ve pushed him against one of the supports, putting my recent lessons to good use, kissing him long and deep and marveling anew at the joy I feel.

“I could get used to this,” he whispers against my mouth. “God, Fraser, to get you in a real bed...”

“You have one?”

He laughs, an almost soundless cackle. “I got three cribs; one’s mine but I can’t go there now. The other two were for my cover and those are out. But soon’s we figure a way out of this mess, I’m going to get us a hell of a room.”

“I don’t need a room, only you.”

“You’re a cheap date, Fraser.”

Not cheap; _profligate_ : I am hard again and so – so is he. It’s so difficult to remember to be quiet, even more so when I feel him pushing against me, when I feel his teeth press into my shoulder; he muffles his moan against my skin, pressing our groins together; then he wraps his hand around both of us. This time I join him, feeling our penises strain together, soft skin, hard muscle, and all of it enveloped by our hands and a rich, heady scent. I come first, gasping my release into his neck, and he strains against me, pushinginto my hand. I squeeze and he gasps, his penis pulsing strongly in my grip; he bites my shoulder hard enough to mark me; and then I feel his tongue tracing the indentations his teeth left as he brings his breathing under control.

Another long kiss and then he shows me how the shower works, where the soap is, even the washcloth and towel. Fortunately it’s an old beach towel, almost large enough for both of us to dry off together, and the soft, worn sweats he’s lent me absorb the remaining water. He collects another jug of water to take back down with us and we assay the stairs again, guided by the small, bright circle of light.

He makes me take more Tylenol, and drink more water, and then, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, climbs onto the mattress with me, under the blankets, and pulls me into his arms.

We wake once in the night; this time it’s slow, slow and sweet, his mouth on mine, his penis gliding alongside mine, a smooth, languid rhythm, at least until I gasp, and moan, clutching him close. Then, quick as thought, he’s between my legs, licking, sucking, then swallowing, and I sense, rather than feel, his hand working his own penis, until he moans against my hip and then goes limp, boneless, his breath warm and cool by turns on my skin.

Although we drift off after that, after he crawls up my body, kissing me as he does so,to rest next to me again, the ecstasy bubbling inside me is too effervescent to contain. I awaken at what seems to be every few seconds, although in reality it’s probably minutes or even hours; and each time, he’s still there.

I want to laugh out loud, I want to shout my newfound knowledge to the four winds, I want someone, somewhere – everyone, everywhere! – to know this, to know _of_ this.

Finally I hear birds chirping, the harbinger of dawn, my favorite time of the day: the renewal of God’s creation.

I slowly, noiselessly, ease from our – our! – bed and go to the window, pulling aside its covering and tucking it away with the bungee cord. The sun is still a glow beneath the horizon, a bright line beginning to form a sphere.

This – _this_ is the mystery. It has to be. This ecstasy, so effortlessly achieved, the communion of man with God, becoming one with another: how was this forbidden? Why? 

Was it too easy? Too powerful? 

Why insist on a spiritual communion when the physical one, this fierce fountain of joy, was within our grasp all along?

The chirping is growing louder; somewhere in the near distance a dog barks.

Ray pads up behind me, almost startling me: I’m outside myself again, looking in and marveling at the ease with which I understand things, the way the world seems brighter, the way I can taste the wind and almost understand the language of the birds.

“You okay?” he whispers, perhaps mistaking my silent ecstasy for regret; and I realize he’s refraining from touch lest he influence the direction of my thoughts.

I’m back in my body now and I turn and look him in the eye, and – since he won’t – I take him in my arms. “I am _wonderful_ ,” I whisper. “ _Everything_ is wonderful.”

He laughs, again almost soundlessly, his hands warm on my back. “That, uh, might just be the sex talking.”

“And what if it is? Did God not create sex too? Did he not give us this gift? It’s just as much a sin to reject his gifts as his trials.”

“Boy, if I’d had you for CCD I might have enjoyed it.”

I take his face in my hands and I kiss him, gently, closing my eyes; and when we part, when I open my eyes again, the sun has risen and Ray is glowing.

He takes my face in his hands, in turn, his lips parting; andmine part in response as he leans in. His kiss is less gentle than mine, more assured, more... focused. His hands too: he slides them down my body, hooking the worn, loose waistband with his thumbs, pulling me against him and pushing them down in the same smooth motion. I am less experienced, and thus tardy: by the time I reach for his waist, he’s already sinking to his knees, already kissing my stomach, then–

The sun limns his eyelashes as they half-close, casting impossibly long shadows on his lean cheeks, turning the stubble there golden as well, and I’m not sure any more what’s real and what’s my fancy, light turning shadow to brightness, impossibility to endless possibilities, imagined sensations to infinite pleasure as he sucks, his cheeks hollowing, then lets me slip from his mouth so he can lick, lick and kiss, and then suck again. And, again, I find my hands in his hair, as if of their own accord, knowing, now, the shape of his head, cradling it even as I feel and hear a moan escape from my throat.

“Yeah,” and Ray’s breath is warm even against my heated skin. “Oh, _God_ , yeah.”

He lifts me, his lips seeking more skin, further down, soft and loose, his tongue warm and wet as it weighs and balances my testicles, sucking one, then the other; and my moan this time can’t be contained, nor do I try: I have been in the dark long enough that the sun on my face is a warm, gentle reminder. 

Ray’s tongue, his mouth, is becoming less gentle, more urgent, as he moves to take me in his mouth again, and I hear him murmur something about the bed, but he makes no movement away from me. Nor could I move from him: his mouth is exquisite, and so is our rhythm. 

“God,” he gasps, and I slip from his mouth, so hard my penis bounces upwards, but he steadies me with one hand while he reaches into his own pants with his other hand, his head tilted back, his eyes closed, the sun brighter still on his face. “Just a – just a sec, Fraser, just–”

“Let me see,” I whisper, or I think I do: I am not even sure if I’m forming words; but somehow he hears me, and he pushes and and twists, somehow without letting go of either of us, and if I look down, straight down, I can see his penis, straining, erect in his hand. He holds his own penis just as he’s holding mine; and then he leans back in, renewing our rhythm as if it was never interrupted, stroking himself in counterpoint. And I’m hurtling, tumbling toward the edge, until ecstasy bursts around me like a waterfall in the sun, splashing from infinity to burst into a million more drops.

And Ray swallows, and swallows again, his hand working his penis furiously, and I watch, drained and ecstatic and unable to even think, as he finds his own release, splashing onto my legs, onto the soft cotton crumpled around my ankles, then onto my feet, the rest spilling onto his hand. 

“Fuck,” he pants, sitting back on his heels, then overbalancing, but catching himself with one hand on the floor before I can even react. He grins up at me, squinting in the sun, still breathing hard, and I find myself on my knees beside him before any conscious thought can form, finding his mouth with my own – in fact, with every sense I possess.

“Okay?” he says after a long pause, pulling back too soon, far too soon. 

I too know what it is to doubt belief; and I know what it is to fear certainty. How to tell him what I know? What I now understand? This mystery is one I’ve sought all my life, that’s called to me from my dreams, from my unconscious; now it’s vibrating through every fibre of my being. But I can’t form words from my thoughts.

His smile begins to fade; I reach for him, to cup his jaw in my hand, and I try to convey everything I’m feeling with the inadequacy of words. “I’d say yes, Ray, but you’ll just say it’s the sex talking again.”

He relaxes then, his grin reappearing, warm and open, and he lets himself down all the way until he’s sitting on the floor. “We’ll… think of breakfast soon. Maybe… maybe in a few days.” 

Suddenly I’m starving: “Do you have any more hash?”

“Cheap _and_ easy... the only thing that could make this better would be a real bed.”

“I’m anxious to see what you’ll do with it,” I say, settling next to him on the floor.

His mouth is on mine again before I have time to blink, demanding, promising. “You’ll see,” he whispers. “You’ll see.”

After breakfast and washing up, we shave and dress. Then Ray packs the trash up, saying he’s going to see if he can pick up any news. “I’ll be gone a while, so don’t start getting worried,” he says. 

“I feel I should point out that the last time you said that–”

“I promise, Fraser.” He grins and leans in to kiss me. “Take one of the phones, keep it with you. I’ve got the numbers programmed and I’ll call you to check in. The sooner we know what’s what, the sooner we can make plans.”He jerks his head at the crates by the door, where the rifle hangs. “You got a rifle, Fraser; do you know–"

“Yes–”

“I figured, I figured, you have to hunt up in those Northwest Areas, right? Maybe not with semis–”

I hesitate for too long a moment, then open my mouth to respond at the same moment he does. “I feel I ought to – I was a member of the RCMP for some little time, Ray.”

“You were – wait, _what_? A-a–”

“Mountie, yes.”

“How – no, why? Why–” he jerks his head towards the outer world– “ _that_ , then? Wait, didn’t you tell me – I thought it was your dad who was a Mountie.”

“Is,” I say, an involuntary grin suddenly appearing on my face: my father will die in harness, my mother says, and so will Buck.

“Once a Mountie?”

“In some ways.”

“But you said, yesterday, last night, that you had a, a whatsis, a gift–”

“I do – I did,” I say carefully; memory of that time still covers me in some confusion. Not about my vocation; until this very fortnight, indeed, these past twenty-four hours, I’d never questioned that. But my father, and my uncle, had both been so proud; and indeed I had enjoyed much of my life, even my Depot experience and then after, at my first posting – Whitehorse – until the conviction grew in me, until I could no longer ignore it, that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. The catalyst had been a man hunt – a woman hunt, to be more precise – and we’d become trapped in a late spring snowstorm over the Skagway pass. My partner, a corporal who lacked the mountain craft both my father and Buck had instilled in me from my earliest days, went off a cliff; although I didn’t follow him, in rescuing him, we became pinned down by a howling blizzard. Although my partner survived with only a broken arm, by the time we finally found her – less than a kilometer, due south, from our shelter – she was dead of exposure. I blamed myself; I do to this day. 

Her face was beautiful, even in death, unmarred by anguish or fear. She looked as if she’d remained defiant to the end, as if she’d seen her fate and met it head on. It was of no use to tell myself she was suspected of robbing a bank; death is no appropriate punishment in any event, and in truth no evidence was ever found linking her to anything more than a romantic relationship with the man who had robbed the bank. That circumstance, and her flight, were all that that pointed to her involvement and possible guilt. Compelling circumstances, Buck said, in an effort to be kind; but by then my initial obligation to the RCMP had been fulfilled, my third year of service turned over; and for six months after Skagway, I woke, almost nightly, to a golden voice in my dreams, whose echoes began to appear even in my waking hours, that eventually impelled me to the Church.

“Fraser?” Ray says, quiet, insistent; his hand passes in front of my face. “Fraser?”

“Sorry. I’m sorry. There – there was a chase, a death–”

“Oh. _Oh._ Fuck… I’m sorry,” Ray says, just as quietly, sounding dispirited as I feel. “Downside, biggest downside, Fraser... No matter what you do, sometimes it’s – it’s not enough, just not–”

“I-I – Ray, I could have done… more,” I whisper, and such is our bond that these words I’ve never allowed to pass my lips before, not to Father Ellis, not even to Our Blessed Mother, seem to flow almost without thought into the warm space between us.

Ray pulls me close in; I rest my cheek against his shoulder and take in a breath, a deep, shuddering breath. “No,” he whispers, and his hand is stroking my back. “No, Fraser, knowing you – I’d bet my life you did everything you could.”

“You have no way of–”

He won’t let me pull back; his arms are like iron around me; but his breath is whisper-soft and warm.

“Listen,” he says in my ear. “Listen. Why’d I run to you, Fraser?” I turn my face convulsively to bury it in his neck. “Why’d you end up naked in a basement, being beaten like a dog, for _me_? You expect me to believe you didn’t do everything you could? No. I _know_ you, Fraser. I know you from the inside out. Listen. Listen. You didn’t know my name, or why I needed you to, or even if you could trust me, but you – you hid me from Gravina. From _Gravina_. Without two thoughts. Without any warning.” His lips are warm; he presses them to the soft skin just in front of my ear, then to the still-swollen bruise on my cheek. “I bet my _life_ on you,” he reiterates, his voice a warm, low, murmur, his hand warm on the back of my neck. “And then I brought all this _shit_ down on you, not even thinking past – past that, that instinct, that you’d help me, and you – you backed me, you backed me all the way to the moon and _beyond_.”

Then, astonishingly, he snorts, almost a giggle. “Jesus, so that’s why – oh, Fraser, I wish I could tell you how fucking hot it was to see you buck naked with your knee in Gravina’s back, oh-so-polite – Christ, Kowalski, focus!” he breaks off to adjure himself– “but, my _point_ here is, you didn’t care about anything but helping, still, disarming him, taking your chance when you saw it, even though you didn’t know who or when or even if we were showing up.” He gives me a little shake. “I’m sorry, Fraser, but you – you’re wasted on the Jesuits, I gotta say. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

“Not – not in that context, no,” I say, understandably confused.

He pulls back enough that he can look at me; his eyes are warm and inexplicably sad, belying his humor of a moment ago. “Here’s the deal: when shit like that goes down, in the army, at least, we’d go out and get drunk, start a fight, break a pool cue over some asshole’s head. Cops do the same thing, right? Mounties... Were there not enough of you in East Bumfuck to start a decent bar fight, screw your head back on straight?”

“Well… ah… no.” I hadn’t thought it possible, but my confusion has increased. There were three RCMP personnel stationed at my detachment, including me and my partner with the broken arm; two more had flown in from the Fox Creek detachment. My father and Buck had shown up in the aftermath, but my father had always reserved his drinking and fighting for the trail, or so Buck said. The investigation was followed by many days of soul-searching, punctuated with various enquiries, and a trail grown cold before we ever learned of its existence. 

“RCMP: all the bureaucracy, none of the fun,” he says. “Wish you’d been in my unit, that’s all. You and me, we could’ve taken out more bad guys before 9 am than most people take out all day.”

This is quite literally the first and only time anyone’s ever praised my… professional qualifications, in any sense; and I feel the heat rush to my face as I try to make sense of his words and, more, the implications and emotions behind them. 

“So tell me about it,” he says, quiet, insistent. “Get it out. When this is all over we’ll hit up Murph’s, rack a few, get the rest out of your system.”

He listens, then; the words are slow to come at first, but then they seem to pour out, a jumble he makes sense of somehow, even with my tardy theories of the case mixed in with the cliff that gave way, my dread at the prospect of losing my partner, her frozen, beautiful face. 

“Jesus,” he whispers, sounding awed; and despite myself, I choke back a laugh. “I was thinking, you know, car chase, BOLOs, all that jazz... Not 18 feet of snow, mountains, blizzards. Stolen diamonds, for Christ’s sake! Who keeps diamonds in a bank in _Alaska_ , Fraser? And they – you never found them?”

“ _If_ she was involved,” I say slowly, reluctantly, “but they – I mean, we – thought she was trying to catch up with them. If she was running from them, she would have hidden them…”

“Exactly! That’s what I’m thinking, great minds, right? I’m telling you, she stashed ’em somewhere, Fraser. It’s why she was alone, it’s why she was heading for Canada. She’d double-crossed ’em.” 

“She – she was so–” 

“Beautiful,” Ray says, and he sounds as if he understands, although he can’t possibly. “Yeah, you said. Listen, keep an eye on the guy who went away for it. Tell your dad, or the Mounties, or whoever. He gets out, see where he goes. I’ll bet you fifty bucks he’ll go looking for ’em. He knew her best. He’s not out already, is he?”

“Prob – yes,” I say, more confused than I’ve been in a decade. “I don’t – there was no evidence. He – he was paroled several years ago. God knows we searched; the Americans did as well.”

“Well, fuck,” Ray says without any particular animosity. “Would’ve been fun to track him down but he’s probably long gone by now.” He shrugs. “Someday, huh? Like a – like a quest, a pirate treasure without a map, right?”

The yearning in his voice makes me catch my breath; for a moment I hear the cold winds of the Territories whistling through the room; I smell snow on the wind. 

“Never been north,” he’s saying, his voice quiet, almost wistful. “Only… well, points south. Grenada. Buried treasure there, desert islands and all. I hear it’s – it’s something to see, up north. The mountains, the, uh, the glaciers.” 

“They are,” I say, just as softly; and for a moment I imagine Ray, his face silhouetted against the mountains by the sunrise; and suddenly the magazines by the window make much more sense than they had even previously.

“Chicago’s… kind of flat, compared to all that,” he says, a grin at one corner of his mouth. “Windy, though. Cold enough in winter.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I haven’t been here in winter yet, but I’m told – Grenada?”

“Yeah, that would be – that was it.” 

“You… you were in the…” My mind is a jumble. I know – as indeed the world knows – of America’s unprecedented military action in Grenada nine years earlier, the one that, in retrospect, was the harbinger for their much more recent incursion in the Persian Gulf; and I also know the invasion force for Grenada was composed largely of special ops troops. This – this explains his ability to be secretive, his affinity for danger, his calmness in the face of unprecedented situations; even, perhaps, the rationale behind his involvement in this – this quite possibly lethal both-ends-against-the-middle situation. It’s my turn to ask: “Why–” I jerk my head at the window, words suddenly deserting me again.

“Yeah,” he says, scrubbing one hand through his hair, leaving it more awry than ever, his grin twisting. “We, uh, we don’t get many chances to be part of something bigger than ourselves, and when they come along you gotta grab with both hands and hop on board.” He laughs suddenly. “Or hop off board, that happens too… those anti-aircraft emplacements on the hills, we couldn’t even – we’re flying in fast, first plan was a HALO, then suddenly we go low and next thing our sarge’s saying it’s a LALO, and if we break our ankles he’ll come back for us, or not, so tuck and roll, boys, the good news is we’re so low it’s less room to fall…” 

“You – you were a Ranger,” I say stupidly, finally putting it all together. “Dear God–”

“Yeah, it was the tail end of my – wrong place at the right time.” He shrugs again. “Or right place, wrong time… Got myself some specialized skills for this day and age. They wanted me to re-up for this Gulf thing. Not a chance. Told ’em I’m allergic to sand flies.”

“But you’re–” I struggle for words; his morality is his own kind of wild code, I’ve known that for at least a week now. “You’re not allergic to – to all of _this_.” 

“’No blood for oil,’” he quotes, and, astonishingly, winks. “And all this… well, sometimes all it takes is one good man, or maybe two. _You_ know.” 

“No blood for–” I’m literally at a loss for words; while I agree with him, generally and specifically, that the morality of the American incursion in the Middle East is questionable at best, the idea that a Mob-related turf war is morally superior…

Well. Perhaps he’s not entirely wrong. “…one good man, indeed.”

“Exactly,” he says, and again there’s an intimate smile, approving for reasons I can’t entirely discern. “If you, you know, if you hadn’t been _you_ , Bronco wouldn’t have rolled on Gravina.”

I open my mouth to ask why, but he’s getting to his feet, pulling me with him. “Speaking of, I – I hate to leave you, Fraser, but I–”

I understand duty, although not as well as I thought; and that thought, itself, dismays me not at all, not now. “It’s all right.”

“Just, uh, make sure those guys disappeared, see if I can pick up what’s going on with Labruzzo,” he says, still apologetic. “Try to get my AO unassed. If you’re – not if you’re not okay, though–”

“I’m more than okay,” I say firmly, and I rub my thumb across his knuckles. “I’m more okay than I’ve been… well, ever. But why can’t you call Detective Vecchio?” 

“Because Vecchio is wired up from here to Alaska,” he says, lifting my hand to his mouth almost as if he’s unaware he’s doing it. “I’m not bugged but he sure as hell is, and not just by the bad guys.” He sighs, and his face assumes an expression I’ve come to know well, sitting across a chessboard from him, day after day: he’s puzzling out several moves, several strategies. As much as I myself love chess puzzles, I’d found that his moves often took me by surprise. Once, when I’d said as much, soon after our games had become more regular than not, he’d flashed that grin at me, the blinding one: “Likewise,” he’d said, in his fast, quick mutter.

It must have been that moment, I think now; not because I doubt, but because I need to define it for myself.

But because I know, and trust, how his mind works, I’m convinced by his reasoning, and I quell my misgivings so I can part with him, after a long kiss goodbye, with no more than an adjuration to watch his back; and for the first time, as I sit playing solitaire, I wonder how my mother must have felt, day in, day out, before we moved to Inuvik; how how she must have felt the day she opened the door to the two men, how her pleasure and surprise at seeing a friendly face must have so quickly turned to dread, to fear.

The distraction provided by the few variations of solitaire I know is exhausted, eventually. I tidy up the room and then stand, at a loss; at that moment, one of the cell phones on the crates begins to buzz, and I remember Ray said he’d check in. So I answer it, although the area code is unfamiliar to me; but then, most of them are. To my surprise, it’s a woman’s voice; but she says, “Ray?”

She sounds familiar. Mechanically I begin to answer: “Ray’s not here right now.” She starts to express her dismay, and all at once I recognize her: “Gladys?”

There’s silence for a moment. “Yes?” she says. “Do I know you?”

“It’s me,” I say, ungrammatically and eagerly. “Benton Fraser. How are you? How’s your granddaughter?”

“Benton!” She sounds delighted; I know I am. 

“I’ve missed you,” I say.

“Ray says he’s been keeping you in practice,” she says. “Him and his Capablanca.”

“I know!” I say, and we spend several minutes on chess: I’ve been away from newspapers for several days, and I’ve thus missed Games 7 and 8 of the Fischer-Spassky rematch. Gladys spends some minutes recounting Game 8 to me: Spassky used the Sämisch variation, much to our mutual interest, but lost nonetheless in part due to Fischer’s ingenuity – and, in part, according to Gladys, accompanied by her throaty chuckle, because he went with the “sexy” Panno variation.

“Oh, but I’m using up all your minutes,” she says. “Are you with Ray? He asked me to let him know if something happened, and it happened… let me see. Yesterday. Yes, yesterday. And I forgot to let him know until now.”

I have to assume these phones are secure, at least secure enough: “I can give him a message,” I say, still cautious.

“Oh, thank you, Benton. Someone called and said he was the Style Pig, so I gave him the other number Ray said to give him, the one I’m not supposed to use. I do hope it’s all right.”

Clearly it’s both a code and a failsafe, and successful, at least as far as I’m concerned: I’ve no idea what she’s talking about. Then I think again: Gladys must have been his contact for Detective Vecchio, and, perhaps, the others he doesn’t quite trust with his life. And who would think to call an old woman most consider dotty? 

And then I begin to laugh: having now met Detective Vecchio, whose suit was clearly _not_ off the rack, and witnessed their badinage, Ray’s choice of a code name amuses me more than I thought possible.

“Does that mean it’s all right?” Gladys says, and she sounds as if she’s smiling. 

“I think – I’m almost sure it’s exactly right,” I say. “I’m certain Ray would say thank you. So thank you.”

“It’s no trouble,” she says cheerfully. We spend a few more moments chatting about her granddaughter; and then once again she remembers the minutes. It’s with some reluctance I say good bye; I’ve missed her cheerful mien, not to mention her chess game. But she’s right; these phones probably have limited minutes. I replace it carefully with the others. Then I remember to drink more water, and I take a few of his magazines to the nest of blankets. They still smell of us, and although ordinarily I would reprimand myself for both indulgence and sloth, this is neither: this is waiting, necessary albeit infuriating, and I’m still recovering, so it’s no wonder my body seeks sleep. So I allow myself to read, and then to nap. 

Then, suddenly, somewhere, short and sharp, a dog barks, a territorial challenge. 

Before the echo fades from the room, I hear voices: two men, at least, and footsteps crunching on the broken asphalt. 

It’s the work of seconds to grab up Ray’s rifle; to my surprise the clips are held together in the middle. This makes it easy to tuck the pair of them into my belt; another second to flick the rifle to single-shot and then I pause by the partly-open door, listening hard for footsteps on the near staircase. 

They don’t come so I slide noiselessly into the corridor and then to the door of the stairwell. I can hear echoes of footsteps and the rumble of conversation, but not here, not coming this way.

A fishing expedition, then? Or a trap? Do they know Ray’s not here? 

Do they know I am? 

Somewhere close by the dog barks again, aggressively and repeatedly, and laughter echoes dimly through the building. 

I take the chance to plunge down two flights: the second floor was the safest, Ray had said. And indeed it is: boxes, dusty crates, even old equipment, many places to hide, most offering excellent views of entrances and exits. 

The service elevator rumbles to life: they must think Ray’s not here, they’re making no attempt to hide their incursion. Or do they think he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – escape? 

Behind a large piece of rusted machinery I make another discovery, a very welcome one: an opening in the second floor where the crane from the first floor stops. Multiple exits indeed; and a small amount of climbing and twisting finds me in the casing surrounding the beams, a hiding place that affords both concealment and a partial view of the first and second floors. 

The elevator’s clanking continues past my floor; it appears they know where they’re going. 

Feeling quite foolish all at once, I wonder if it’s a contact of Ray’s, or perhaps a superior; but then again, Detective Vecchio had been quite clear on the subject of my disappearance. 

Over the rumble of the elevator I hear another rumble, a far away one, almost a vibration: Ray. At almost the same second, I realise I forgot to grab one of the cell phones; I have no way to warn him. 

I have to risk it: I wait until I’m sure the rumble that’s Ray’s motorcycle has stopped, and I aim carefully, a single shot out the upper curve of a broken windowpane. 

Unfortunately there’s a clamor from the direction of the elevator shaft almost immediately: of course they heard it as well. I squirm backwards into the casing, back until I reach the pulley mechanism; if worse comes to worst I might be able to effect an escape down the cables.

There is a quiet, muttered conversation. The building is quiet, as if it, too, is holding its breath, and I can almost make out their words.

Then another sound comes from behind me, a rattle and a shuffle. I twist to look over my shoulder, and see the silhouette of Ray, squirming up towards me through the other end of the casing.

He doesn’t stop when he gets to me; he climbs up and on top of me, so his mouth is near my ear, and he drops a kiss on the back of my neck. “Good thinking,” he whispers, barely making a sound. “Thought you might be here.”

Suddenly my arms are shaking from relief and it’s fortunate I’m not holding the rifle because I would have dropped it.

“Who is it?” he continues. “Seen ’em?”

I shake my head and turn it. As quick as thought he drops his chin to my shoulder so my lips can reach his ear. “Two. No effort to hide.”

He turns to answer me and his lips brush mine. “Rifle. Good.”

“Detect–”

“Vecchio? Not in a million years. Only two people know about this place: the guy in charge of this op and a friend.” He sighs, a sad, soft brush of air against my ear. “Up to now I… I trusted both with my life.”

We hear more murmured conversation and then the sound of the elevator again. “First floor,” he whispers.

We both pull back instinctively even though it would be nigh impossible to see us from the room beneath at this angle.

Then the men cross the room, not very cautiously, but still looking around. “…could’ve been some gang,” one says. 

“You sure he was here?”

At the sound of his voice I stiffen, and then he stops and turns and I see his face.

Atop me Ray is whispering soundlessly, a litany of profanity: “Shit, fuck, God _damn_...”

“He was with Gravina,” I whisper. “That second man.”

Ray rests his forehead on the back of my head. “First one’s fucking Internal fucking Affairs. Shit, _fuck_...”

“The second man,” I whisper insistently. “Do you know him?”

“Brandauer,” he says, barely breathing. The two men are still talking below us. “State’s Attorney’s office. Bad. _Very_ bad, this is very, very–”

“If we don’t hear from Sal–” the first man – Hallet – is saying.

“I told you, he’s gone, place is empty, window crashed out. You know him, he probably took that priest and headed right for Cabo.”

“And you know for sure our guy had nothing to do with it?” 

“I don’t know _nothing_ ,” the second man – Brandauer – spits. “I got Vinny breathing down my neck, your guy with who knows what on him, and now Sal and the damn priest are gone and so are Sal’s jamooks.”

“If he kills that priest all bets are off.”

“I got no control over that!” Brandauer says hoarsely. “Don’t you fucking change the rules! You find your guy! Where the hell is he? You said he’d be here. He knows more than he’s told you.”

They look around again and the first man sighs heavily; and then they leave.

Ray waits until the sound of the car engine has faded before whispering, “Careful. I’d have left a guy behind if it was me.”

That never occurred to me and I shudder involuntarily. He hugs me tight and kisses the back of my neck again, then my cheek. “It’s okay. Let’s wait a minute. I need to think. Okay. We need – we need help. We need to, uh, to warn Vecchio. There’s no way he knows Brandauer’s in this. Hell, there’s no way he knows Hallet’s in it. Hallet shouldn’t be within 20 klicks… Fuck. _Fuck_. No one knows that. No one but you, and me now.”

“Who do they work for? Why risk coming here?”

“Brandauer’s a high-up in the State’s Attorney’s office, and Hallet’s from Internal Affairs.” While I try to digest that treachery – Internal Affairs has free rein on all the internal working of many, many otherwise confidential cases across the entirety of any police organization – Ray is still talking. “Maybe Hallet doesn’t think you’re really here, but he’s wise to the whole op, no way he’d have found this crib… I guess at least now we know they got no idea what happened to Gravina, I’ll say that for – well. Anyhow. The only ones who know I was there with Vecchio were Bronco and Jimmy. And Hallet maybe doesn’t know how deep Brandauer’s in it. Brandauer might be trying to find _me_ for Labruzzo, put a face and a name together. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I can’t _think_. I hope those two _dupeks_ stay disappeared. My cover’s already blown but they sure as _fuck_ don’t know what they know.”

“I’m... sorry,” I say inadequately. 

“Uh, Fraser, don’t apologize to me. I’m sitting on top of the golden ring right here. I got an eyewitness who saw Brandauer and Gravina together. I just got to keep us alive until I find a way to use it.”

“We,” I say against his cheek.

“Yeah,” he says back, lowering his head the rest of the way so the end of the word pushes into my mouth; and we kiss, gently at first, then passionately. Then he lifts, and I twist, so we’re lying face to face, and he settles back on top of me with a sigh. The kissing continues, passionate but without intent, until I am in almost the same state of altered consciousness that I was this morning, before the sun rose.

Ray brings us back to reality with a last, lingering kiss, and then another sigh. “We’d better get moving,” he whispers. “Brandauer’s probably setting up a stakeout about five minutes ago and IA sure as fuck’s not gonna to call him off, or let anyone else call it off.”

“If they’re waiting outside or if one of them stayed, the motorcycle-”

“We’ll have to risk it. Lucky you travel light.” He drops one last kiss on my nose, then nudges me, wriggling backwards off me so I can go first.

We are as quiet as we can be, going upstairs again. Ray checks the crates by the door and shakes his head. “Phones are all here,” he says, and for the first time I hear worry in his voice. “Did they come in here?”

“I’m almost certain they did,” I say, reluctant to add to his worry but unable to discern the reason for it.

“All right, never mind,” he mutters, almost to himself. “Let’s go, let’s get going. Bring the rifle.”

He grabs his pack, puts the rest of the ammunition and weapons in it, sweeps the cell phones into it and cinches it.


	12. Detestatio sacrorum

The journey to the motorcycle would be more nerve wracking, I decide, if I knew what to be frightened of; but Ray moves cleanly and silently from shadow to overhang to wall. The motorcycle’s in a different place, of course; and Ray takes a few extra moments to make sure the pack is cinched tight, snapped, and buckled as he hefts it on my back. “Last thing I need is a weapons charge on top of everything else,” he says close to my ear, then leans in to kiss me quickly.“You okay?”

“I don’t know enough not to be,” I say honestly. 

“Are all you Canadians like this?” he asks with a twist to his mouth. “This trusting?”

“You haven’t given me any reason not to be,” I say just as quietly as he did, leaning in to brush his lips with mine. 

“Okay,” he whispers, as if he doesn’t know what he’s saying, and he kisses me again, harder this time. “It’ll be okay. I think I got a plan. This, this with IA, this is a whole new wrench in the – anyway, I know a guy who’s true blue. He won’t let them disappear this. We’re going to try to make it to him.”

“Detec–”

He laughs soundlessly, that cackle I already love. “I got more than one friend, Frase.”

And is it naive or simply human that his casual shortening of my name sends a thrill through me, so much so that I don’t even worry when he starts the motorcycle?

We go a different way this time, through the rail yards, near a string of deserted junk yards. Or not so deserted: a now-familiar bark sounds, loud enough to be heard over the motorcycle’s engine.

“It’s a junkyard dog,” Ray says quietly, slowing the motorcycle to a an idle. “He’s been here a while, I’m never sure why. I thought maybe they were moving drugs through, but there’s never any activity. Might just be some cranky old guy.” Through rusted pieces of metal, a makeshift barrier behind a dented chain link fence, concertina wire sagging from the top, I see a small shelter. A chain rattles and then I see the dog: he’s watching us intently, and his gaze is... intelligent. He’s some kind of husky mix, so his fur is less matted and disarranged than it would be in another breed. He drops back a pace, his tongue lolling from his mouth, enough slack that the chain around his neck shifts.

It’s the cilice, or, rather, the collar I thought the cilice was; and for a moment I’m shifted out of time, remembering the feel of the teeth biting into my skin. 

Cruel, cruel and unnecessary – the point of it, the point of his collar, to keep us under control, to keep us from being who, and what, we were created to be.

“Oh, no, Fraser,” Ray says as I dismount. “No. Hell no. He’s vicious, and what the hell are you going to do with him? Fraser. Fraser! We don’t have time for this!”

There’s a buzzing in my ears; his words barely register. The dog watches me intently, still making no sound; yet he was quick to anger, earlier, when others trespassed on his territory, and he clearly discerns the difference between Ray, belonging, and those other men, not belonging. 

And me, belonging to Ray, at least as far as the dog is concerned. From the mouths of dogs, as it were.

“It’s the wrong kind of collar,” I hear myself saying. “They’re not supposed to be used that way.” 

I can’t perceive any difference in my voice, but Ray shuts the motorcycle off. 

The gate’s secured with a heavy chain and a padlock, but the hinges of that same gate are rusty, one nearly coming apart already, and it requires only a kick to break it in.

“Jesus, B&E, this is all we need,” Ray’s muttering next to me, helping me pull the gate down and out of the way, helping me drag a piece of the tin roofing over to cover the rusted concertina wire that sits awry at its top.

The dog, still watching us, sits down. His tail waves once in the dust.

“You’re a braver man than I am,” Ray whispers, but I feel no fear. The dog waits patiently while I fumble with the collar; it’s been on him a long time and his thick fur is tangled in the snap lock. “Now what?”

“We’ll find him a home.”

It’s clear he’s not listening, and, in truth, why should he? I know, myself, I don’t mean it. “I did not sign on for a dog, Fraser. A priest, sure. An ex-Mountie? Okay. A Canadian? I’ll consider it. But a dog? No. No. No. This I did not sign on for.”

“Neither did I,” I say quietly, finally untangling enough fur to release the snap. “Get behind me.” 

Ray does no such thing, of course; and I can’t say I’m surprised. I take a breath and release the collar. He stands and shakes himself off, thoroughly, then looks at us expectantly.

“I knew it,” Ray says. “I _knew_ it. It’s just like a kitten, oh, don’t worry, we’ll find it a home...”

“It’s a motorcycle,” I hear myself explaining to the dog, as if he can understand me. “There’s not much room.”

“There’s _no_ room,” Ray says, but from the sound of his voice, he’s resigned. “Even if you try to put him between us, which is the only way it might work, he’ll panic or rip out your throat. Or both.”

“He’s about thirty kilos. Can we manage it?” 

“Yeah. Sure. Because we’re not enough of a target already.” His voice is dry but I see one corner of his mouth quirk up.

“Well, Ray, perhaps no one will be asking if they saw two men with a dog on a motorcycle,” I say in my most reasonable voice, and Ray throws back his head and laughs, full throated this time, a sound I’ve been craving since... well, since I met him.

The dog seems to understand; when I pat the saddle in front of me, he jumps up, and he lets us arrange him so he’s held tightly between us, his head on my shoulder. He’s far too thin, in line with his general state of neglect, but unfortunately his state does make it easier for us to fit him there.

“If he starts to jump, let him,” Ray says, pausing to look over his shoulder. “I’ll feel him going and I’ll slow down; you’ll do more damage if you try to stop him. Okay? Okay, Fraser?”

And I can’t say anything, anything at all except, “Thank you.”

I don’t think I’ll forget that ride as long as I live; the dog is quiescent, yet enough of a distraction that I don’t spend every second waiting for a shot to ring out, or listening for the sounds of sirens… only every five, or ten, seconds. 

Despite the dog, Ray is still careful, using underpasses when he can and following nothing like a direct route. We begin to attract more attention when we start to reach inhabited streets, warehouses giving way to old apartments, houses in various states of disrepair, some with yards overgrown; and, finally, the rumble of the El in the distance. 

“I’m hoping it’s going to be this easy,” Ray says over his shoulder, slowing at a corner. “They ought to guess where I’m going, but maybe not soon; or maybe they won’t, because Brandauer hates this guy more than almost anything else.”

“We’re in your hands,” I say back, risking a moment to loose my grip on his torso to grasp his shoulder, caress his neck with my thumb.

But our arrival is anticlimactic; we pull up behind a brick building, an official-looking pool of cars on one side, parking on the other side, and not a few patrol cars there as well. Ray doesn’t pause or park; he drives quickly, directly, to the stairs at the back door. “C’mon, quick,” he says urgently, cutting the engine. “Our luck can’t hold much longer.”

My confusion deepens when we enter the building; clearly it houses some kind of law enforcement activity. Ray sees me looking around and laughs again, more quietly than before: “Did you think we were going to end up at Fat Tony’s? Ha. We still might.”

“ _Ray_?” says a tall, dark-skinned man, as if he can’t believe his eyes. 

“Jack!” Ray says urgently. “Is he here?”

“Shit, Ray! Do you know _everyone’s_ fucking looking – Jesus Christ, is this the _priest_?”

“Jack! Focus! Where is he?”

“He’s in his office, Christ, Kowalski – uh, sorry... sir?”

This last is directed at me, and Ray slants a grin at me.

And I grin back: what is there to say, really, after all? And it is in that moment that I realize I have left behind the priesthood, as easily as falling of a cliff, as easily as taking off a coat, as easily as stepping outside into the sunshine.

But I have little time to contemplate my fall from (or rise to) grace; the man called Jack is leading us down a corridor and around a corner to an office enclosed with Venetian blinds, some closed, some open; and through the windows I can see a middle-aged man sitting behind a desk filled with folders and paperwork. He looks up as Ray opens the door unceremoniously, an admonition clearly on his lips; but when he sees Ray, he stops short.

“Detective Huey, draw the blinds,” he says, getting to his feet and coming around to the near side of his desk. “I assume this is St. Michael’s missing priest; and you’re not dead, Kowalski,” he says calmly. “Upon reflection, I find this pleases me.”

“It’s not over.”

The man sighs. “When it’s you, Detective, that can be assumed. Father Fraser, I presume?”

I look down; he’s holding out a hand. I grasp it bemusedly. “Please, call me Benton.”

“Lieu, this is Benton Fraser,” Ray says hastily, tardily. ”Fraser, this is Harding Welsh. He runs the Major Crimes Unit here at the 2-7.”

“You’re a _policeman_?” I say, and I can hear the incredulity in my voice; and why I choose this point to stop believing him, I’ll never know. Too many things fall into place, all at once: Detective Vecchio had said he’d broken his cover; Ray had said the man in the warehouse was wise to the “whole operation;” but none of it had slotted together until this moment, when I’m faced with reality and my mind can’t encompass it. 

“Undercover,” Lieutenant Welsh says after a few seconds, when it’s clear Ray is struggling with laughter, or something else, and can’t answer. He raises an eyebrow and watches Ray sardonically.

“Undercover?” I say, directing my words to Lieutenant Welsh. “Why? How long–”

“Whoa, Fraser, okay, hold up,” Ray says finally. “Later, buddy. Lieu, we got a motorcycle and a dog that need to get gone and stay gone. They probably already know we’re here–”

“We run a clean shop, Kowalski,” Detective Huey says, somewhat belligerently.

“A dog?” the Lieutenant says to me, one eyebrow raised.

“Ah… the dog was purely accidental, sir.”

“As they so often are, aren’t they,” he agrees solemnly, and I suddenly find myself liking him very much, and I’m not at all surprised, now, that this is the other man Ray trusted with his life.

There’s a sharp rap on the door and it opens before the echo fades. “Lieutenant, we got a BOLO on a motorcycle with two guys–” The speaker, who stops short at the sight of us, is a lovely young woman with large dark eyes and dark hair. 

“I haven’t seen a motorcycle with two guys,” Lieutenant Welsh says slowly. “A motorcycle, two guys and a dog, sure, but just two guys on a bike? You see those all over Chicago, Ms. Besbriss. They’re going to have to give us a little more to go on than that. Detective Huey, get that motorcycle signed into evidence pronto.” And despite his earlier caveat, Detective Huey doesn’t protest but leaves immediately.

“And this,” Ray says, pulling the pack and the rifle off my shoulder, but it’s too late; he’s already disappeared around the corner.

“Log those for Detective Kowalski, would you, Ms. Besbriss?”

“The dog too?” she asks, and our rescuer/rescuee, obviously an opportunist, whines eagerly and sits down at her feet. She sighs. “Do you have a name? I might have some doughnuts.”

“He does not have a name,” Ray begins, at the same moment I say, “Diefenbaker.”

“No!” Ray says. “You are not giving him a name!”

“I didn’t,” I say. “I knew it. It’s not the same thing.”

“Thanks, Elaine,” Ray says as she leaves with the dog, and he shoots me a look that says our discussion isn’t finished; and the intimacy of that look thrills me down to the bone, and it’s a moment or two before I can concentrate again on the conversation between Ray and Lieutenant Welsh. 

“...Brandauer and Gravina.”

At this, Lieutenant Welsh, who’d been leaning against his desk, his arms crossed, comes to his feet. “ _What_?” he hisses, clearly remembering at the last second to keep his voice down. “What the hell, Kowalski. What the _hell_.”

“It gets worse,” Ray says grimly. “Brandauer and Hallet, this morning, at my crib.”

Lieutenant Welsh just stares at him for a long moment. “The _fuck_ ,” he says finally. “Nice of you to come to me, Detective. I’m touched – to the heart – by your extreme thoughtfulness.”

“Yeah, I thought you might be,” Ray says, and finally there’s a glimmer of a grin, one answered, reluctantly, by the Lieutenant. 

“So… the whole thing’s blown. And the BOLO…” His voice slows, trailing off.

“I couldn’t think where else to come,” Ray says, almost under his breath. In a more normal voice, he adds, “I guess we’ll have to take our chances with the state’s attorney’s safe house. I’m just trying to keep him alive until we get there.”

“You have much more faith in human nature than I do, Detective,” Lieutenant Welsh says, and his voice is back to what I assume is his habitual drawl. He crosses to the door and opens it, raising his voice without looking away from us, “Ms. Besbriss, get Ms. St. Laurent down here ASAP. Vecchio, my office, now.”

“The State’s Attorney’s office? Now?” Ray says. “What about Brand–”

“I suppose it escaped your notice, what with your foray into SPCA work and all,” the Lieutenant says, still in that same slow voice, “but if Gravina let the good Father, here, see him with Brandauer – and _vice versa_ – they were counting on no one ever seeing him again.”

“I’ve been trying not to think too much about that,” Ray says, shooting a sidelong glance at me, and he puts a hand on my arm for a brief second. “But Brandauer thinks Gravina took off to Mexico with him,” and he jerks his head in my direction. 

“And Gravina’s still missing?” the Lieutenant says, just as Detective Vecchio joins us. They both look at him, expectantly, I realise; but he simply smiles at them.

It’s not a nice smile at all. “Maybe he got smart and skipped town.”

“Yeah,” Ray scoffs. “And maybe pigs’ll fly out my–”

“Language!” Detective Vecchio says in a shocked voice. “There’s a priest present, Kowalski. My mother would wash your mouth–”

“Gentlemen,” Welsh says, “while I hate to interrupt your charming little rituals, what is Ms. St. Laurent going to need to know? And when is she going to need to know it?”

There’s a quick rap on the door; Detective Huey sticks his head in. “Elaine said to let you know Louise is in court. It’s going to be a while before she gets down here. And she’s taking your dog down to the vet to get him checked out, Father.”

“Please call me Benton,” I say. “And thank you.” 

After the door shuts, Lieutenant Welsh says, “If we can’t sound Ms. St. Laurent out, do we have a Plan B?”

“Uh, 2-7 witness protection?” Ray says.

Lieutenant Welsh raises an eyebrow. “An original proposition. Apparently I’m not in the loop. Would you like to rectify that, gentlemen?”

I feel oddly outside myself; as I listen to them explain, I realise how very little I knew – and know – of what is going on. I recall Ray’s frustration in the church, that day; his instincts, that someone knew someone, were accurate. But apparently the implications – and ramifications – are far-reaching. Ray’s long undercover operation was irreparably compromised, and long before anyone knew it: Hallet must have been on Labruzzo’s payroll for some time. But at the very same moment something far greater has been revealed: the mole, Brandauer, whose existence he suspected, and under the State’s Attorney’s purview, no less; Hallet, Ray says, must have been playing both ends against the middle, taking a payoff from Labruzzo while maintaining plausible deniability about Ray and his operation. Until I was kidnapped, to draw Ray out; at that point, Detective Vecchio says coolly, Hallet must have realized the only way to get out of it was to let Gravina have me; or kill one or both of us.

“He’s not going to be safe in any of the safe houses,” Lieutenant Welsh says heavily, a deep furrow between his eyes.

“ _They’re_ not going to be safe,” Detective Vecchio says, nodding at Ray. “He’s out, he blew his cover, and who knows who Bronco and Jimmy have told by now? Kowalski’s case was bad enough, but _this_ is going to explode–”

“The Fibbies,” the Lieutenant says grimly, and all three men look at one another. “All right, Detective. Please give your wife a heads-up. Fortunately you don’t have to spring a dog on her too.”

“Sir–”

“If you have a better suggestion, Detective, I’m all ears.”

Lieutenant Welsh looks at Detective Vecchio for a long moment; somewhat to my surprise, after glancing at me and Ray, he shrugs. “Not at the moment, sir, no.”

“You want us to sneak out or–”

“No,” Detective Vecchio says, holding the Lieutenant’s gaze. “The more people who know where you’re going the better. Isn’t that right, sir?”

“I’m glad to see we understand one another so well. Go let Mrs. Vecchio know. Be ready to leave in twenty. Father, if you’d like to come with me, Detective Huey will be glad to take a preliminary statement and get some photographs of your, ah, condition.”

Ray opens his mouth as if to object and then seems to think better of it. Still, I’m not altogether surprised when he enters the room with me and sits, almost belligerently, at the table. When Detective Huey enters, he has a few words with the Lieutenant, who then leaves while Ray and the detective take some photos of the bruises on my face and torso. To my surprise, Detective Huey’s questions are very short and basic: my name, my place of residence, my job. When he gets to my country of citizenship, he glances at Ray, then says, somewhat formally, “We’ve notified the consulate, Father, and they have procedures. Unfortunately they’re apparently short-staffed so they won’t be able to send anyone over until tomorrow at the earliest.”

“Could you also let Father Behan know I’m safe?”

He looks over my shoulder at Ray, then shrugs. “I’ll let the Lieu know,” he says. “He’ll have to make that call.”

I must look bewildered; I know I am. But Ray pats me on the shoulder. “Thanks, Jack. Let’s get going, Fraser.”

Unfortunately Ms. Besbriss is still nowhere to be seen as we leave so I ask Detective Huey to give her my thanks. He watches us leave, still staring, as if he can’t quite believe what just happened. Or perhaps I’m projecting, because I myself have a feeling of unreality.

That question occupies me to the car. It’s an old, olive green two-door and Ray holds the seat forward so I can access the back seat. After the engine turns over, Ray leans back and motions me forward so he can say quietly in my ear, “I know you got questions, Fraser. But the car may not be clean either.”

Detective Vecchio cocks an eyebrow in our direction and nods, almost imperceptibly. “You guys need to stop for anything?” he says in a normal voice. 

“Only thing I can think of is toothbrushes,” Ray says. 

“No problem,” Detective Vecchio says, swinging his car into traffic. 

Ray leaves me in the car with Detective Vecchio when he pulls into the parking lot of a drugstore; they seem not to have to even discuss the arrangement. 

The bag he emerges with holds more than toothpaste and toothbrushes. “Socks!” he says cheerfully. “Underwear!”

If his intent was to make me laugh, he succeeds; and even Detective Vecchio grins, that genuinely warm grin I saw for a few seconds in my erstwhile prison. “Maybe _someday_ someone won’t mistake you for a bag lady, Kowalski.”

He acquaints us with his domestic situation as we wend our way to his house. He’s married, obviously, with three children and another on the way. His wife and children are going to stay with his mother tonight – he says this rather loudly, while we’re stopped at a traffic light – and not for the first time do I wonder what kind of danger we’re still in; and what kind of danger his family is now in.

“They stay there all the time,” Detective Vecchio says, glancing over at me. “My ma spoils the kids rotten; it’s a vacation for them and for Irene. She gets a chance to put her feet up. My little sister still lives at home; she plays with the kids like she’s one of them. You’re not imposing, Father. Welsh is right. This is the best solution for now.”

I’m only partially reassured, but it’s kind of him.


	13. Vita mutatur non tollitur

We are in time to meet his wife; she’s packing a small cooler in the kitchen when we arrive. She’s a tall, slim woman, clearly in the early stages of her pregnancy,whose eyes light up when she sees her husband in the door. “Irene,” he says, “this is Father Fraser.”

”Hi, Ray,” she says, and then leans forward to shake my hand. “I’m so glad we could help you out, Father. And I’m even more glad that you’re both safe.”

“Thanks to Ray and your husband,” I say warmly, shaking her hand. “You’ve gone to a great deal of trouble for me. I appreciate it more than I can say.”

“It’s no problem,” she reiterates. “Help yourself to something to drink.” She nods towards the island, where several pitchers are standing and several glass filled with ice. She andDetective Vecchio leave the kitchen, discussing domestic minutiae, and Ray pours us each a glass of lemonade. A few minutes later we hear the sounds of children coming down the stairs, and seconds later they tumble into the kitchen.

Detective Vecchio follows, holding the youngest. “They wanted to say hi before they leave,” he says, somewhat apologetically. “Father, this is R.J., our oldest; this is Anthony; and this little devil is Nick.” Both R.J. and Anthony solemnly hold out their hands to be shaken; and the toddler in Detective Vecchio’s arms, watching them, holds his hand out too. I shake all around, equally solemnly, and then, seeing Mrs. Vecchio watching me, I realise she’s hoping for a blessing, which I can’t in good conscience perform; although I am still – for the moment – a priest, and it would comfort her. I wonder, a new thought to me, if that can – or will – ever end. Will I always think of myself as a priest, even as I leave the Church? I can’t imagine that I will, and yet I can’t imagine that I won’t. 

And again I wait for the panic at the prospect of leaving the Church, but I am still calm and clear-eyed; or, possibly, still in shock. But one of the benefits of formation is the capacity for self reflection that it refines in us; our minds, and not only our bodies, are, word and deed, instruments of God.

And He can be found in everything; even those things most unlikely; and, catching Ray’s eye, I smile, almost involuntarily. He smiles back, a quiet, intimate smile, where only the groove on the left side of his mouth deepens; and we gaze at each other, and the world seems to fall away.

Detective Vecchio has returned from his goodbyes and, standing in the doorway, clears his throat. “Let me show you your digs. Welsh has two teams on the house. I don’t suppose I need to tell you not to stick so much as a pinky finger outside, right, Kowalski?”

I’m somehow not surprised when Ray only laughs at him.

“I mean it,” Vecchio says, but he sounds as if it’s a conversation they’ve had before and he doesn’t have much hope of being heard this time, either. “Unfortunately we’ve got a thing at school tonight, so I’m going to have to ditch you.”

“So that’s why two teams,” Ray says, nodding, then draining his iced tea in a gulp. 

“No,” says Detective Vecchio, in what I have already learned is the tone of exaggerated patience he seems to adopt with Ray. He takes Ray’s glass and moves to the kitchen sink, where he turns the water on full blast to rinse his glass, and mine when I hand it to him. Despite the noise, he says, “There’s another team on the way for that. He’s spreading the risk.”

Ray cocks an eyebrow at him, but says nothing; Detective Vecchio shrugs irritably and waves his hand. “Don’t look at me–”

“Yeah, I got that part, you’re just a dumb, lucky cop,” Ray says. “Whatever. How clean is this place?”

“About as clean as you’d expect.” Detective Vecchio shuts off the water. 

Ray scoffs, and then they both laugh; and I feel as if they’re speaking Basque and trust that, eventually, the situation will be explained more clearly.

“There’s a lasagne in the fridge,” he says, motioning with his head. “Knowing Irene, there’s probably an antipasto too. Do not put the pasta in the microwave or I’ll have to shoot you myself. Now, the good news is–”

“Oh, there _is_ some,” Ray mutters.

“–we do have room for you,” Detective Vecchio continues, almost blithely, leading us up a flight of stairs with two landings. “We’re about to start a remodel, though, so everyone’s pretty squeezed right now. I can give you a double in the guest room, and the boys’ room is just down here–”

Ray glances at me, then opens his mouth, but I’m quicker. “The guest room is fine, Detective. You’ve already gone to a great deal of trouble for us.”

He stops in the hallway and looks from Ray to me and then back to Ray. “Oh, please, Kowalski, please, please tell me and all the little lambs of God that you are _not_ sleeping with the priest who’s Welsh’s witness.”

“He’s _my_ witness,” Ray says indignantly, just as I say, “Actually, the one pre-dates the other.”

“ _You_ should know better,” Detective Vecchio says, and, astonishingly, he’s looking at me, not Ray.

And... he has a point. 

Or, two weeks ago, I would have said he had a point.

“I’ve made the mistake, once, already, of mistaking my will for His," I say steadily. "I did not look for this, or expect it, but here it is, in my path and unmistakeable. This is a matter of conscience, Detective. Thus I have no objection to sharing a room with Mr. Kowalski.”

Detective Vecchio begins to scoff, and I catch his gaze and hold it, easily.

“We are told, we are taught, to look for God in all things. No, more than that: that God _is_ in all things, whether we see him or not.You know, my father once told me that the sky isn’t just above you, that if you look at the horizon you’ll see that it actually touches the ground. So if you think about it, wherever you go you are actually walking in the sky.” 

And, truly, for the first time, I at last understand the full import of my father’s words, and a feeling of benison washes over me, nothing at all like the unreality I felt earlier; instead, the world is brighter and colours are sharper, all my senses heightened, the smell and the feel of the endless tundra, the endless horizon around me: I am, and have been, walking in the sky all along. 

It just took Ray to show me.

Detective Vecchio turns and looks at Ray, and I brace for an explosion of righteous indignation; I may have cost us our safe house. 

“Christ, Kowalski, you didn’t tell me he was a _Jesuit._ ” He turns and leads the way towards the back of the house, motioning to us to follow him, muttering under his breath.

Ray looks at me and grins; I smile back and he touches my fingers with his.

“Washer and dryer are here,” Detective Vecchio is saying, opening the door to a small room. “We have a great hot water heater, so do not be afraid to wash those things you call clothes, Kowalski. Your room is back here...” and he opens another door into a larger room. 

“It’s lovely,” I say, looking round.

The room is near the back of the house, so there’s a tree outside the window; the bed takes up much of the room, but there’s an old dresser with a small television on it, a radio next to that, and a large mirror behind both of those, and a rocking chair in one corner next to another tall, narrow dresser. 

“Bathroom’s in here,” Detective Vecchio says briskly. “Built to my wife’s specs, so don’t complain about the colour. Robes are behind the door. The laundry chute in the linen closet goes nowhere–”

“I bet I could have figured that out,” Ray says, and Detective Vecchio punches him on the shoulder. 

“Father, no offense, but you look beat,” he says then. 

“Please, call me Benton,” I say, but he continues to talk.

“Why don’t you hop in the shower and I’ll show Kowalski how the alarms work, get a load of laundry started.”

“You got coffee on offer?” Ray asks.

Detective Vecchio makes a sound that can only be described as a snort. “Yeah, I knew it was my espresso machine that was really behind all this ’oh pretty please, I need a place to stay’ bullshit.”

It’s clear they want to get rid of me; and I must admit the prospect of a hot shower sounds wonderful to me. So I acquiesce, trusting that Ray will fill me in later. They wait for my clothing, standing outside the bathroom door and chatting idly about coffee and renovation. Apparently the house next door fell vacant, “which opened up a whole lot of options for us,” according to Detective Vecchio; hence the remodel. 

I take my time in the shower; a large amount of hot water is a novelty to me, both from my upbringing and my vocation.

Former.

For the first time in several days, I allow myself to think – cautiously – about the future, and yet I’m still not panicking. I don’t know what I’ll do; I don’t even know how I’ll stay in Chicago; but I feel no fear, just the sense of calm that has been with me since I realised at the police station that I had already left the priesthood, at least for all practical purposes, a calm that has moved beyond that fatalistic unreality I felt in my prison.

Well, perhaps panic will set in later, I think, wrapping myself in one of the large and thirsty robes. I find myself wishing for a razor, but if the room was indeed designed for his mother...

But I’m not really surprised – given his acquiescence to the plan and the lasagne in the refrigerator – to find a razor in the medicine cabinet, a new razor, blades, and, of course, shaving cream. 

This – this is undreamt-of luxury, especially considering where I was just forty-eight hours ago; and a shudder runs up my back. What _has_ happened to Gravina? Where are St. Christopher and Bronco?

As if summoned, Ray chooses that moment to rap on the door, and enters hard on his knock. “Hey,” he says breathlessly. “Any hot water left?” As he speaks, he’s stripping off his underwear and t-shirt, casually, unconcernedly, as if we have lived together for years, and with far less ceremony than my compatriots at theologate. Clearly he's already put the rest of his clothing in the wash with mine. “A razor? Great. I bought one too, but I should have known. You don’t mind if I shower before we eat?”

The showering appears to be a foregone conclusion, but I don’t say that; I just smile at him. “There seems to be plenty of hot water.”

He grins back, turns the faucet on, then turns back to me and pulls me into his arms. “God,” he says against my mouth. “I got another earful from Vecchio about you but all I could think about was this... you.” The kiss that follows is long, and ardent, and I’m learning how to kiss, how to kiss him, how it feels to have his tongue in my mouth, mine in his, how the scrape of his stubble feels against my upper lip, everything: it’s possible to get lost in just this moment, and I do, so much so that when he pulls back for a breath and then moves his lips to my ear, it takes a few seconds to make sense of what he’s saying. 

“Bathroom with something on is pretty safe to talk,” he’s whispering, so low I almost can’t hear him. “Bedrooms, radio or tv, he’s got a thing worked out, otherwise don’t talk about anything important outside this room. If it’s important and you don’t know if it’s safe, say you want to play chess.”

“Why would Gravina have Detective Vecchio’s house–”

“It’s not Gravina,” Ray whispers, and his breath is warm in my ear. “Or not just Gravina: Labruzzo, probably; IA, definitely. FBI too.”

What on earth? I pull back and look at him; his eyes are dancing. “Why are we _here_?” and I forget to whisper.

Showing the discipline I clearly lack, he doesn’t raise his voice above a whisper. “Because it’s going to be really hard to disappear you if two or three different agencies have this place staked out, and have had for years.”

“I got that, thanks,” I say, but my sarcasm doesn’t dim his mischievous gaze. “What I–”

“Vecchio’s wife is Frankie Zuko’s daughter. Childhood sweethearts. It’s pretty cute. Anyway, her brother’s taking over for his old man, so everyone thinks Vecchio’s on the take.”

“Who?”

“It’s like you’re from another planet,” Ray says, but his words have no sting; his voice is oh so soft and so is his smile. “Everyone in town thinks Vecchio’s a dirty cop. But everyone’s afraid to cross him, cause, you know, Frankie Zuko’s son-in-law, right? And everyone’s hoping they’ll get to the Zukos through him. The Zukos, right? You heard of them? The Zukos run some business here. So Labruzzo’s been sniffing around his territory, and New York’s not paying any attention, but that’s a whole different–”

“A dirty – and you brought us here? On _purpose_?” I feel my voice rising, and heat rising in my face, and the world falling away beneath my feet.

“He’s not,” Ray says, his smile finally fading. “I mean, at least no more than any other cop. At least as far as I know.”

“And what _do_ you know?”

“I know that if I was in his shoes,” Ray says carefully, but still quiet as a breath of wind, “I’d take advantage of the fact that everyone’s afraid of me, and I’d take advantage of the fact that my phones are tapped, and I’d take advantage of the fact that everyone thinks I’m dirty to get some fucking _cop_ work done. Which is how I found you: Bronco went to _him_. He couldn’t get to me; he didn’t know how and he didn’t know who. But everyone knows Vecchio, the 27th’s dirty cop. And I knew – I hoped–”

I suddenly feel shaky, and put a hand out on the sink to steady myself. Ray puts one hand over mine. “Take a breath, Fraser. Breathe.” He takes a breath himself, audibly, and I imitate him without thinking. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, softly, moving his hand up my arm to my shoulder to my neck. “You’re so calm that I, uh, I keep walking all over you, and you act more like a cop than a priest, so it’s hard to remember you’re not. Now. A cop, I mean. Did I mention the waste–”

“My father–”

“Yeah, a Mountie, I know, I know. I, uh, I think you take after him more than you know; you feel like a partner at my back, and I keep – I just keep forgetting... okay, look: you’re in a lot of danger, Fraser, no lie.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah,” he says impatiently, waving with his other hand. “I’m kind of used to it by now. It’s what I signed on for, but you – you didn’t. And you’ve trusted me so far, Fraser, trust me this little bit more. It might get worse before it gets better but we’re doing our best.”

“I know that,” I say past a sudden lump in my throat, trying not to remember the faces of the Vecchio boys, or the warm smiles shared between the detective and his wife. 

“And, hey, if we get killed, at least they’re going to know who did it,” Ray says, still quietly but irrepressibly cheerful despite that. 

“Oh, that’s much better, thanks.”

“Truth, justice... no, wait, maintain the right? Is that it?”

For answer, I kiss him again; and he emerges, breathless, his eyes dancing: “Or is it the other one, how you always get your man?”

I can’t help laughing: “The unofficial motto I always heard, at least from my uncle, was ’what happens on the trail stays on the trail.’”

“That’s good,” Ray says against my mouth. “I like that. Tell him he should trademark that.”

And, emboldened by his touch, by our situation – the suddenly real possibility that we could be killed and the undeniable truth that is Ray’s body pressed against mine – I press a kiss at the base of Ray’s neck, and then I sink to my knees, trailing my lips and hands down his body, his stomach, his abdomen, to, finally, his sex. I hear the intake of Ray’s breath, above me, but I am only dimly aware: I want to taste him, and this time it’s even more than curiosity, more than reciprocity. I know the weight of his penis in my mouth, I know the feel of his skin on my tongue, but it’s more than that, more even than the scent and taste of him, the sound of him, somewhere above me, a cut-off moan, a whisper that’s my name. 

We almost exhaust the hot water, but Ray seems to have no complaints. Certainly I have none. I can still taste him in the back of my mouth; the bitter herbs have given way to the scent, the taste, that I now define as “Ray.” He sags against the wall, his hands in my hair, and when I look up the expanse of his torso at him, he lifts his eyelids and looks down at me from underneath those lashes, the groove deepening in his cheek. He shuts the water off with a trembling hand; he barely washed and it doesn’t seem to matter to either of us. I dry myself again, looking at him; he dries himself, watching me. 

The new underwear and t-shirts are handy, and I’m touched that Ray purchased a package of boxers for me. Ray helps himself to the packages too, pulling on a fresh white t-shirt to match my own; and I reflect that, living undercover, he has to _live_ undercover, as it were, with limited access to laundromats lest even that become a routine that can give him away. I open my mouth to ask him about the chess, but then I remember our signal, our code, and the bugs, and I close it again.

While he fiddles with the radio, I check the laundry: the wash cycle is finished so I put our clothes in the dryer. Through the open door I see Ray glance up when the dryer door closes, and he evidently gives up on the radio. “Lasagne smells good,” he says, reaching for my shoulder. “I’m starved.”

In the kitchen, I find the antipasto in the refrigerator and Ray pours us some more lemonade. The lasagne has five more minutes, according to the timer on the stove. “You want some wine?” Ray asks, opening the refrigerator again. “I know he–”

“No, thank you,” I say, guessing that Ray considers himself on duty. 

“Oh, there’s a salad in here too,” he says, pulling out a large glass bowl. “There ought to be... ah. Here.”

By the time we’ve located plates for the salad as well as utensils, the timer’s gone off, and we sit down, finally, to our meal, taking advantage of the breakfast bar although the kitchen table, long, rectangular, and clearly well used, sits empty.

Out of long habit, and new gratitude, I say grace. Ray sits quietly, clearly having been raised with the custom but just as clearly not participating. 

Over our dinner, Ray flicks an olive pit idly off his salad plate and I watch it skitter across the granite, coming to rest under the rim of my plate. “So.... ‘Benton,’” he says, and I look at him, surprised: he already knew my name. Both parts of it, in fact. 

He squints a little, as if the room is too bright. “You keep telling everyone to call you that.”

In the act of taking another bite, I can only nod. 

“Not ‘Father,’” he says, more quietly than before. “It sounds like you’re, uh... you’ve already decided–”

“I have,” I say, interrupting and for once not caring for manners, for politeness – this is too important for that. “I told you.”

“So how do you, you know, leave the church?”

And I sit back and look at him; and he looks at me; and I feel laughter bubbling up inside me. “I have no earthly idea; I’ve spent all my time in the past few years trying to get _in.”_

He joins me in my laughter, his hand coming up to cover mine on the table. But soon enough he sobers, stroking the back of my hand with his thumb. “I’m just, uh, concerned. That I’m, you know, still walking all over you. That you’re being pushed into this. Us.”

I wipe my mouth carefully and deliberately. While it’s true that the decision may, indeed does, seem precipitate to him, it’s less so to me, since I was not laboring under much of a self-delusion, not after that very first time and – if I am honest with myself now – even before that. 

“One of the principal advantages of the Jesuit order is condign training in self-reflection.”

“Thirty days here, thirty days there,” Ray says, his grin widening, his face relaxing.

“Exactly.”

“We didn’t have much – much to do with Jesuits where I grew up, either,” he says, jerking his chin over his shoulder as if to indicate someone else: Detective Vecchio, I presume. “So I don’t… it’s only what I’ve heard.”

I suppose this is as safe a topic of conversation in a bugged house waiting for assassins to arrive as any.“Which is to say?”

“Scary smart. Which you are. Uh… how many angels on the head of a pin? You know that, I’m guessing. Our – the priest I had for confirmation prep, he said Jesuits had the devil’s tongue.” He slants a grin at me. “I am all over _that_.”

I eat a few more bites. “We’re often regarded as the outliers,” I say finally. “Our relationship with one another, with God, with the Church, is more… independent. We’re responsible for our own consciences, our own behaviour, and we answer to God for our sins.”

“I guess…” Ray says, taking another forkful of lasagne. “I mean, confession, how does that work for you?”

“Taking responsibility. In some ways… it’s simpler. In some ways, it’s regarded with suspicion. We give all of ourselves in a personal way, but we’re responsible in a personal way. Where the Church teaches right and wrong, the Jesuits understand only God can know a sinner.”

“That’s _definitely_ not what I was taught,” Ray says, and there’s a grin hovering at the corner of his mouth. “So… sin’s not the same thing as wrongness?”

“I… yes.” I have to sit back and look at him. It’s like having dinner at the theologate; I think I may have had this very conversation before, but then I was Ray, and the priest I was talking to… was me. “Yes. Wrong is harmful, disorderly, destructive. It comes from your heart; a distancing from God. I… I have never felt closer to God than these past few days, Ray. I have never felt closer to Him than when I am in your arms, feeling you move against me.”

Ray’s eyes widen and he glances over his shoulder again. 

I feel panic begin: was I not supposed to speak of this, of us?

But Ray shakes his head. “No, it’s good, I’m out, I’m out, it’s… I’m just waiting for some lightning,” he says, and there’s laughter lurking in his eyes. “It’s… it seems like a big thing, that’s what I know, leaving the Church. Priests leaving the church. Giving up… that. Not enough priests.”

“It’s not a relinquishment, Ray. Or, rather, it’s a relinquishment of what I am, was, not what I can be or will be, now.”

“And what’s that?” His voice gives nothing away; but when I look up, surprised by the question, I see all the emotions he’s holding back in those clear, limitless eyes. 

“I don’t know,” I say; but unlike him, my emotions are all too apparent in the choked-off words, forced through the closeness of my throat. 

“Can – can you?” he says, and now I hear the worry.

“Can and will,” I say. “It’s – it’s not that. Not at all. It’s you… it’s staying here. Me, I mean.” My grammar is suddenly as fugitive as my voice. 

“Wow,” Ray says after a long moment. The smile on his face is brilliant, warm and intimate; it’s not at all the reaction I was expecting. I feel myself begin to smile in response. “C’mere,” he whispers, but we are already so close I can feel the warmth of his lips. “We’ll figure it out, Fraser.”

His lips are soft, warm, redolent with the taste of tomatoes and spices; and if the kiss was meant to be brief, a reassurance, neither of us seems to have control over what it becomes. There’s a lesson there, but it’s not one I have the time, or inclination, to learn. Instead I focus on Ray, the taste of his mouth on mine, the feel of his neck under my hand as I pull him closer, the muffled thud as he slides off his stool to find his feet, nudging my legs apart and inserting himself there, in the cradle of my thighs. 

It’s not enough, and it’s too much; the sound he makes when I tilt his head, the sound I make in answer as he puts his hand on my chest, palming a nipple. “Yeah,” he whispers when I groan, when I push closer, when I pull him closer still with a hand on his hip. “We’ll definitely figure it out.”

“All of it,” I whisper in return. The words echo in my head: all of it – _everything_. 

He laughs, the sound muffled in the crook of my neck. “Yeah,” he says again, his lips lingeringon my neck. “But Vecchio’ll kill me if we, uh, ‘sully’ his kitchen.”

“We should do the dishes.” My tone lacks conviction; instead I turn just enough to press my lips against his cheek, just beneath the sweep of lashes. He smiles and I can feel it. 

“Any time,” he says, and turns his face just enough so our lips meet yet again. Too soon, he breaks off, far too soon; but it’s gratifying to see the flush on his face, the warmth of his smile, the reluctance as he draws back. 

Well, onerous tasks get no easier with delay. “Wash or dry?” I ask.

He grins, jerking his chin toward the dishwasher. “I’ll wash.”

We divide the clean-up neatly; he finds cling wrap under the sink to hand me, and I wrap up the leftovers and wipe down the countertop as he rinses our plates and puts them in the dishwasher. I’ve spent much of my own life without such a luxury, and even Ray seems stymied by the array of buttons. “Someday they’ll talk to us,” he mutters. “Then Skynet’ll use them to take over the world. ‘Rinse’ sounds safe.” As it starts up with a low hum, he swivels around, pushing me against the counter and licking his way into my mouth. He draws back after a moment, but it’s only to grin again, and to say, “We could try out his espresso machine but if I broke it…”

“This seems safer,” I agree, and this time I’m the aggressor, pulling him against me and reveling in the feel of our lengths pressed against each other, the warmth and strength of his arms, even the hard ridge of the countertop behind me, pressing into my back.

“I was gonna suggest a game,” he says, nuzzling the skin under my ear. “Get us out of the danger zone here. His chess set’s in his study.”

I want to ask how well he knows Detective Vecchio: he’s been undercover for at least two years, as far as I can tell, but clearly he knows his way around this house, and their banter has an easy familiarity. But that’s probably not a safe topic of conversation either, not here, not now.

“I won’t be able to concentrate,” I say, just as softly, into his ear, kissing the skin in front of it, just where his stubble starts. 

“Me either,” he whispers back. “Fair’s fair.”

But the truth is neither of us can or will concentrate. After a bare quarter-hour, where I can concentrate only on the fingers of his hands, hovering over the pieces just as in my memories, my dreams – now reality, and a reality that seems more important and more immediate, more material than anything else I can imagine, more important even than the fates swirling around us – I give up any pretense of interest in the game and simply watch him as he frowns at the board. He lifts his eyes at last; I don’t pretend not to stare. A smile starts at one corner of his mouth. 

“It’s not going anywhere,” he says.

“It’s going everywhere.” 

He pushes the board aside; several pieces topple but it matters to neither of us; what matters is Ray’s mouth on mine, his body against mine, straddling me, pushing me back into the chair. I’d never have imaginedany of this; I’d never have imagined Ray could fold himself up to fit against me so well, even in the awkward space of an armchair.

And none of it matters at all; all that matters is the weight of him against me, in my arms, anchoring me to the chair, to him, to this new reality. I’m getting better at not thinking: I let go my worry about the night, and the future; I let my thoughts go altogether to concentrate of the scent of him, the feel of him, the taste of him, his lips against my own, his tongue, warm and clever and demanding more, and more again, and more still, and letting me take, and take, and take again. 

Upstairs, the dryer buzzer suddenly sounds, and we both jump. In the aftermath, as my heart rate settles, and Ray draws back to stare hungrily at me, I feel uncertainty bubble up. He has let me take the lead, and he’s taken the lead; I ought to know what, how far, we can go. But I know none of it. Then I’m suddenly aware of the listeners outside, so I whisper: “Ray… I don't know how to do this... any of this. I don’t know what…”

His smile is as warm as the light in his eyes. “Tell you what, Fraser,” he says, his voice pitched equally low, leaning back enough so he can twist and pull his t-shirt off. I stare, fascinated, as he leans in, sliding his hands up under my t-shirt, warm against my bare skin. “You do what you want and I'll tell you to stop if–”

The rest of his words are lost, drowned in my mouth. I do know how to do this; after all, I was always a quick study. And he lets me plunder his mouth, not quite passive, but pliant, oh so pliant in my arms, pushing against me where I pull him in, his lips as eager as mine, his hunger as evident as my own. It's easy to get lost in this, in him... so easy. It's not until I've sucked a bruise on his collarbone, his moan echoing in my ear, breathless and broken, his fingers gripping my shoulder so tightly he's undoubtedly leaving tiny bruises of his own – it's not until just that moment that I realise. “You – you won’t,” I say thickly, scrabbling for words on top of air, licking my way up his neck between times. 

“No,” he says, his voice equally thick, sounding half-drugged. When I pull back to look, gathering my thoughts, he follows as naturally as breathing, his lips at the side of my mouth, then on my jaw, where I feel his teeth press into my skin for a brief ecstatic second. 

“You... won’t," I say again, struggling for words and wondering why I'm even trying to speak. 

“No. I won’t,” he says into my neck, and his tongue is warm and wet there where my pulse is throbbing, and – incredibly – he sounds as if he understands me. 

But he can't possibly know the certainty I suddenly have, and the ecstasy accompanying it, bubbling all through me, effervescent and irrepressible. “You won't tell me to stop.”

“I'll never tell you to stop,” he says, against my mouth this time, and it sounds like a vow. “I told you, Fraser. I told you. I mean, I tried to–”

“You did,” I whisper, trailing kisses down his neck to his collarbone to lick the bruise I’ve left there. “Oh, you did.” His skin is warm under my hands, the muscles in his back shifting as he arches against me. The rumble deep in his chest vibrates against my lips, against my hands. I close my eyes and breathe him in, licking the taut skin above one nipple, then the nipple itself. His gasp echoes in my ears. I need neither courage nor resolve to pursue him, to taste more and more of him. He shudders, and shudders again, pressing up against my mouth, holding me close, one hand around the back of my neck and one wound in my hair. As he arches against my tongue, as my lips slide lower and lower on his belly, he inhales so I can smell his arousal, piquant, provocative. I slide my hand lower, but my fingers are unwieldy; I am distracted by the scent, the taste, the feel of him. He murmurs something, impatient, but I’ve already anticipated him, finding my way around and under the elastic to grip him, skin to skin. He groans and thrusts; all at once I’m impatient to see him, feel him, stretch him out and taste all of him. This chair, this room, we’re too constrained.

“Ray,” I whisper against his neck; and I stroke him once for punctuation.

“Mmm, God, yes,” he says thickly.

“Ray.”

“Please–”

I release him, gently, struggling for breath, for composure, even if only for a few seconds, ro long enough to get up the stairs to the haven of the bedroom.

He seems to read my mind, sliding down far enough to kiss me. “Bed?” he whispers.

I fight back a smile: my confidence is almost as intoxicating as the feel of Ray against me, the confidence that I can tease, that he will respond, that we understand one another. “It’s far too early to go to bed.”

I feel him grin against my mouth. “True,” he says. “After all, the Hawks are playing and Vecchio has this TV–”

“In the bedroom?” It’s my turn to whisper because, in truth, I can’t summon any more air into my lungs than the bare minimum.

“Yeah, no,” he says coming to his feet and pulling me to mine. He leaves the chess set where it fell, stopping only to retrieve his t-shirt and turn out lights as we go. I can read his thoughts as if they’re my own: why make it easier? But even that reminder of our reality does little to quell my ardor or my erection. We stumble at the foot of the stairs and pause, breathless, to kiss, to laugh, and to kiss again before we find the light switch and turn it off together. 

 

“C’mon,” Ray says, holding out his hand. “Let’s go find that TV.”

He continues to turn out lights, hovering behind me as I retrieve our clothes from the dryer. Once inside room, he pulls the door shut with a decisive click. While I quickly fold and stack our clothes, putting them in close reach, he fiddles with the television again, then gives a low whistle as the static resolves into a grainy picture: the hockey game. I perch on the end of the bed, more to be near him than to see the game, as he adjusts the antenna. “He’s got this, uh, this giant TV in the basement, it’s like a mini-theater. Rear projection or something. It’s not the same as being at the game but, you can almost feel the boards shake.” He gives me a quick, keen glance. “You, uh, you like hockey, right? That’s a requirement to be Canadian, right?”

“I do,” I say, almost meaninglessly. “I love hockey.”

“That’s good, that’s great,” he says, smacking the top of the set with the flat of his hand, then settling back next to me, watching the fuzzy picture with great interest. Casually, he pulls me close; just as casually, I hope, I put an arm around his waist. He leans over, his eyes not leaving the screen, and says quietly, “Safer to talk now. Just not too loud. Christ, Chelly, you call that a check? My grandmother…”

It seems far too late now, but suddenly I remember, and in a few short words I acquaint him with Gladys’ phone call of – was it only this morning?

“Yeah,” Ray says, still watching the screen. “You probably figured by now we, uh, that it worked.”

“It was ingenious,” I say, momentarily almost as distracted as Ray by the game: a fierce battle behind the net for the puck. The puck spins free, passed down the ice, and we both breathe a sigh of relief. “I’ve missed her.”

“Me too,” Ray says, and this time he looks at me, a quick glance, a flush mounting on his cheekbones. I stare, both taken aback and hungry at the same time, longing to taste the heat in his face and wondering if–

“I missed her, I mean,” he says, casting his eyes down; his lashes are long and golden. “But, uh, but I – well, that’s when I noticed you.”

And I – I was blind for far too long, I want to say, but I want to hear more, and still more after that.

“Yeah, I – I noticed you playing chess with Gladys, and that was nice, and I thought, well. Yeah, he’s a priest, it’s what they do. But you kept showing up – I mean, I gave her a game when I could but it wasn’t – I couldn’t keep it up, not, you know, every day.”

Yet you kept it up with me, I want to say; you kept it up with me for weeks – almost two months, really, altogether. But he’s still talking.

“– lonely since Henry died, and kind of on the edge of, you know, loopy. She tell you about the lead?” 

I nod. Indeed she had, maintaining that he was acaraphobic; I had restrained myself then from suggesting a more practical solution, such as a lead-lined coffin, since the suggestion was in fact many years too late to be useful.

“Yeah, lucky no one’s ever copped to that, and it wasn’t too often, but always, always on the day he died, and, you know, someday soon someone’s gonna put her in a home – finally she let me keep the gun for her, so that was less of a – but, so, yeah, I was–”

“Looking out for her?”

“Yeah. And I’m sorry, I mean, it wasn’t that I thought – well, okay, it was, I was, what if you were sticking your nose into it, busybody priest, to put her in some Catholic charity home. But then I saw that you – you weren’t like that. At all. And she talked about you, too, like you were just a normal person, a guy in a dress she played chess with.”

This surprises a laugh from me: I can hear her saying it so clearly in my head. That I was a priest never had seemed to impinge on her consciousness, but it hadn’t needed to; as Ray had so astutely observed, that wasn’t why either of us was there. 

“And I know now, I mean, I see now that you were never – that you weren’t.” He looks at me straight on then, his voice still quiet but with a note in it I’ve never heard in anyone’s voice before. “But you were with me, Fraser. With me, and even with, uh, with Jimmy and Bronco.” He touches my face, gently, still healing, and I lean into his touch: it’s instinctive now. “You’re like something out of a dream. I thought guys like you only – only existed in movies, you know? You got a guitar? A singing priest?”

I feel the heat mount in my own face now, but I do, in fact, know how to play the guitar, and I say as much, although (I hasten to add) I don’t actually own one. And then I remember to ask if St. Christopher – Jimmy – and Bronco are all right.

“If they stay disappeared,” Ray says, his smile disappearing as well. “God, thank God, I mean, it’s just a thing, okay, I’m not converted, here, Fraser, but if there was a God, I’d thank him that they had the sense–” He pulls my face around, a palm on either cheek, and kisses me urgently and ungently.

“He – he told Vecchio he heard you singing. Vecchio didn’t know whether to believe him or not. He asked him what, like, you know, the Tallis Canon or Bach, or something, and Bronco told him no, he told him you were singing something like a sea shanty, and another song about someone’s hand – well, he said it put shivers up his spine. Jimmy’d gone to sleep so Bronco left Jimmy a note that he was going to get breakfast and he hightailed it to Vecchio’s house, waited around until Vecchio went to his coffee shop, and… well, you got most of the rest. Gladys did her part, and Vecchio, as soon as he shook his tail, he called me, and we came up with our plan.”

I know that a deep flush has stained my cheeks. I have no explanation for the singing. But Ray doesn’t ask and so after a moment or two I regain my composure. Ghosts are one thing; that was a full-blown delusion; or a comfort my subconscious mind conjured to help me find space to process, to cope. 

“That kind of courage,” Ray’s saying. “He’d never seen it, the way you stood up to – to them from the get-go… Which, I’ll say again, in case you missed it, I’m right there with him. And then that…” He shakes his head, and his smile is beautiful. “…you kneeling there, naked as the day you were born, your knee in his back…”

“You and the motorcycle,” I whisper; it’s all I can do, but it’s all I need to do: our foreheads are nearly touching. “You risked your life, and blew your cover…”

“I heard that gunshot and I lost my mind, Fraser, I’d been looking high and low, shook down everyone I could think of, not a clue, not a word, and then the – then Vecchio called and he made me promise, promise, but all I could think was it was my fault, and what if–”

For the first time I look outside myself: I have had doubts, indeed, and ample time for self-reflection; but somehow that time never encompassed Ray, not until now, when I see us both through that dark glass: him, to my experience, and I, to his experience. 

And once again I ask myself why: this knowledge seems so simple, the lessons, long thought of, long studied, hours and days and weeks of prayer and self reflection; and yet now everything makes sense, everything is clear, and it takes no more than a touch between us, a tremor of breath, a sigh and a glance, and the mysteries of the universe and the mind itself are no longer mysteries at all.

Ray seems, once again, to have entered into this communion just as I have: he sighs again, his breath ghosting across my lips. 

“And now,” he whispers, answering my unspoken question, “now I’m gonna have to go straight, Fraser. No more undercover for me. I’ve got someone waiting at home. Along with his dog.” His hand closes on mine; mine was already seeking his. 

The game is long forgotten; so, I must confess, are those silent listeners, whoever they may be, and however many there are. The television is our only light, and more than we need. Our kingdom now is the kingdom of touch, of scent, of taste, of sound, and time itself seems to slow and wrap us in a warm embrace. Ray’s promise, the one that revolved around a bed, is kept; indeed, it is fulfilled, our pleasure overflowing between us as Ray shows me still more, and more again: lips, tongues, even teeth, followed by fingers in unexpectedly delightful places. I mimic Ray’s lessons, pressing up and in, and Ray’s moan, long and low, fills my soul like warm syrup.

He laughs, then, joyous, as his orgasm overtakes him: “I knew it,” he says, breathless and triumphant. “I knew it, I knew you’d–” My own orgasm follows only seconds later, my laughter entwined with his until we are indistinguishable, satiated and spent. 

When we recover, we shower quickly rather than thoroughly. I doze off to the distant sound of the hockey game, Ray’s heartbeat steady in my ears, the rise and fall of his chest enough to entice sleep regardless of the circumstances.


	14. A solis ortus cardine

I can’t say what wakes me but I see a flash on the far wall, opposite the bed; it takes me a moment to realise it’s the mirror reflecting the window above our heads. Beside me, Ray stirs, and I find his shoulder in the dark and shake it. I feel rather than hear him come awake under my hand, and I lean in close to his ear. "There’s a light."

Fortunately for my sanity, it flashes again, in the mirror, and I feel the tension course through his body, stretched out alongside mine. 

He turns his head enough to breathe in my ear, as he did — was that only this morning? — in the warehouse: "In the empty house? Next door?" 

Clearly it’s a rhetorical question because even as his warmth lingers on my ear, he’s rolling away and lifting the phone on the night stand, again quietly; and he burrows under the covers, between us, and I feel his fingers pressing buttons but even to me the beeps are muffled. He does it three times; then he emerges from the covers and, just as quietly, replaces the phone on its stand. He rolls back over and breathes in my ear again: "Get dressed, don’t make a sound if you can; if you do, try to make it sound like you’re just sleeping.”

Fortunately the mattress doesn’t squeak; we knew that already. 

The flashes from next door have stopped and there’s barely enough light to make out the stack of clothing on the dresser. But Ray’s teeth flash nevertheless, a quick grin, no doubt meant to be reassuring. 

We sort out the clothes quickly and get dressed, and as I’m tying my boots, Ray returns to the bed, where he retrieves his pistol from the floor by the bed. Then he eases the nightstand drawer open and takes out another pistol, holding it out to me.

“Well, I’m not licensed–”

“Yeah, Fraser, we’ll put that on your tombstone,” Ray hisses in my ear. “Did they teach you how to use it in Mountie school?”

For answer, I check the safety and the clip, hoping the click is not something that will give us away; and then, following his lead, I tuck it into my waistband. 

Ray clicks the lock on the door and eases it open; from downstairs, we hear a squeak. He looks at me, and I him; and then he closes the door again and presses the lock back into place. 

We’re trapped: I look at him, but he’s already moving to the bathroom. 

“The cavalry should be coming,” he whispers. “Don’t panic. Not that you do.” His kiss is quick and warm, and I feel the imprint of his lips lingering on my skin.

He’s opening the door of the linen closet; and suddenly I remember Detective Vecchio mentioning the laundry chute; and I wonder how many other things he managed to communicate to Ray in that seemingly casual conversation that I missed. "You go first," he hisses. "You should be able to brace yourself on the sides, like a chimney. Keep your gun handy in case they figure it out. I’ll cover the top. C’mon, c’mon.”

Although my experience with laundry chutes is not vast – nonexistent, in fact – I had always envisioned them as an opening in the wall, but this one rises up out of the floor exactly like a chimney stack.

“They’re usually wider at the top than the bottom when they start on the second floor, so stay up as high as you can. I’ll try to stay off you,” Ray whispers. “They echo like a motherfucker. Go, go, go – they’re probably to the stairs by now.”

Despite Ray’s assertion that it’s “wider”, it’s still a tight fit, but I have room to move my elbows and, reassuringly, to reach my waistband. It takes me a moment to get my back straight and to feel the sides of the chute beneath the soles of my feet but then I’m moving downwards, quiet, sure-footed. There are seams in the metal, vertical and horizontal; the latter are enough to provide a grip for my boots, my knees bent enough for additional stability.

A few seconds later and Ray’s coming down above me and I brace one shoulder against the chute to provide a platform for at least one of his feet so he can brace himself on me in turn; if they discover us, he’ll have the element of surprise but he’ll need at least one hand free. As if he hears my thoughts, I feel his left foot find a position between the chute and my shoulder; he tests my load bearing capacity and finds it sufficient, and then I sense rather than feel him retrieve his weapon from his waistband. There’s no real change in the amount of light but the dimness seems to grows darker, and in the unnatural stillness I imagine I can hear Ray’s heartbeat.

But it’s mine, thudding in my ears. 

There’s a snap and a crack and I jump; Ray whispers reassuringly, his voice a bare ghost of sound, “Door.”

The crack is followed by two sounds in rapid succession: I realise, tardily, they are gunshots, guns with silencers. 

They weren’t taking any chances – or prisoners, this time; I swallow the sudden gorge rising in my throat.

More thuds, a muffled curse, and a dull crash, as if a nightstand was overturned, and the lamp on it. “Where the hell–”

The voice is unfamiliar to me, and I feel some tension leave my body: I must have been expecting, subconsciously, to hear Gravina.

“Shhhh,” another voice hisses. “Closet. I’ll check here.”

Hard on his words, the bathroom door opens and there are irregular flashes; a flashlight, no doubt. Then I hear the shower curtain flung back on its rings; then the door of the linen closet creaks open. A long, long moment: the only sound I hear is my heart pounding in my ears, echoing off the metal sides of the chute. Above me, I hear Ray easing the safety off his weapon, and in turn I brace myself with both knees so I can reach behind me– 

But the chute must look narrower to our pursuers than it did to Ray; after another long, long moment, there’s the sound of the closet door shutting and there’s a quick conversation between them in what’s clearly the doorway of the bathroom. 

“Where the fuck–”

“They couldn’t have gotten past us. They must be hiding up here.”

“Did you look under the bed?”

“Fucking _fuck_ , asshole. Are you sure they’re here?”

“Here, and _here_. Back bedroom, he said.” 

“They could be anywhere by now. Fuck. _Fuck_.”

“Don’t panic. Let’s finish up here, check the rest of the house, the basement. They won’t get past the cordon.” Their footsteps fade away.

Above me, Ray makes a movement, quickly stilled. I wonder if the cavalry’s not coming after all. 

I reach up carefully, inhaling loudly so that it won’t startle him, and pat his calf. After all, we’re hidden. Safe, for now; and, after the past few days, this seems less surreal than almost anything – everything – else we’ve been through. 

Of course, several days ago, my first instinct would not have been to comfort Ray but to seek comfort, myself, in prayer, and in hope. And yet now I seem to have no need for either.This is the truth of the heart, this gift: of caring for another more than yourself, these more than possibilities so outside my experience that my mind seems to spin in limitless directions every time I try to encompass how my heart has expanded my world; my _universe_.

And then there’s a loud crash from downstairs, echoing in the chute; I almost think the house shakes. “Yes!” Ray says above me, and he’s no longer whispering.

There’s some shouting and more thuds, but, thankfully, no shots fired. I reach up again and squeeze Ray’s leg; I feel rather than see his hand, waving towards me: “Hang on, Fraser. Don’t trust anyone. Not unless–”

There’s a heavy tread on the stairs,and a lighter one, and lights going on; I can see the lid at the top of the chute getting successively brighter around the edges.

“They said no one’s up here,” says a voice outside the bathroom door.

“Kowalski’s stayed alive this long,” says another voice, this one familiar; and Ray’s hand reaches down to grip mine on his leg: it’s Lieutenant Welsh. “Kowalski? You in here? We got two cops in custody. Vecchio’s on his way over to check out the damage. We’re not going to hear the end of that any time soon.”

His voice is coming nearer as he speaks, and Ray begins to climb up the chute. I follow, more slowly, bracing myself so Ray can boost himself up. 

“Laundry chute?” says the Lieutenant’s voice, and the light is suddenly bright. ”Points for originality, Kowalski.”

“ _Cops_?” Ray says, but he sounds more disappointed than disbelieving, and angrier than either. 

The next moment he’s gone, and I begin climbing up myself. Then Ray’s head is back, looking down at me, his head haloed by the light; and his hand is reaching down to me in my darkness. 

 

_*End*_


End file.
